I am saying this as a Gen Z queer, before y’all get your guns out to fucking shoot me.
But I need y’all to understand that if someone doesn’t give you their government name in a queer space, it’s not because they’re “mysterious,” and you do not have permission to take it upon yourself to figure out their “real identity” and go digging for them online like a private investigator. First, that’s creepy and a violation of privacy and reasonable boundaries. Second, some of us keep our private and professional lives very separate because we need to keep food on the fucking table and a roof over our heads, and our private life could jeopardize that.
“Why won’t you tell me about your parents?” “Why can’t I know your real name?” “Where do you work?”
1.) Not all our parents would bake us a fucking cake when we come out. Some of us are closeted. Surely you understand this? You also do not need to know my parent’s names or occupations; we are both adults. I do not need nor want to mix you and my private life with my parents and my public life.
2.) Trans people do not owe you their dead name or government name
3.) I’m not telling you for the sake of job security. I am a government fucking caseworker working amidst a fucking lavender panic!
“There’s no way you’re a different person outside this; you’re still you at your core. What harm is there—”
No, I am a completely different person. A different person with a different personality and different interests and a different name and presentation. I am a completely different person because I keep this life and my public life private to avoid fracturing 90% of my interpersonal relationships and 100% of my professional ones.
“You’re not out? But you’re so confident.”
See— that’s part of the issue. Y’all assume someone is in the closet because they hate themselves or lack self-identity. Some of us know exactly who we are, but need to prioritize financial stability or else our entire life gets exponentially harder immediately.
You meet queer people over the age of 40 and one of the first/earliest questions is “who knows?”
I need y’all to start bringing that energy. Because it’s not always safe for someone to be out and not everyone is safe to be out around.
There is a misnomer that “the closet” inherently means “doesn’t know they’re queer” and not “isn’t out widely and publicly.” “Outness” is often a patchwork.
shane hollander is not homophobic. hayden’s pretty sure. solidly 85% sure. mostly very sure. he’s a good dude! he never makes those types of jokes and he has a gay friend, some figure skater he grew up with, and he had recently told rose that while he’d never seen the movie moonlight, he knew it won a lot of awards. so yeah. shane hollander is not homophobic.
but then. okay, a few years ago, hayden had asked if shane wanted to go to pride with him and jackie. shane had said no. no big deal. shane says no to most invites to loud, sweaty, places where he might have to say hi to fan or eat processed food.
shane hollander is not homophobic.
then again. shane hollander never fights. he certainly doesn’t instigate. but he had. he had swung on scott hunter after the end of play. at the time, hayden had asked shane why he picked a fight with scott hunter of all people (a lot of people called shane boring & uptight. hayden had always thought this was really unfair because shane was secretly very funny. he just didn’t like strangers. as far as hayden could tell, hunter was actually boring & uptight, but he got away with it because his play was so inconsistent it gave the illusion of him being interesting).
so the fight was weird. what was weirder, is how shane bristled and mumbled something about the fight being “personal” and “the principle of the thing.” hayden chalked it all up to stress. until now, as he sits, listening to scott hunter accept his mvp award, as the first out gay NHL player.
the thoughts float across hayden’s mind like a wispy clouds. wow, imagine the vitriol scott has heard over the years. heartbreaking, hayden thinks. i wonder if other players knew about him, hayden thinks. shane had the room next to his at a few league events. i wonder if shane knew, hayden thinks. god that fight was so weird. hayden stops thinking.
shane hollander is not homophobic.
now the thoughts fell like petulant rain.
he didn’t go to pride because he’s well. shane’s never shared a diagnosis so it’s really not hayden’s place to speculate. besides the point. shane hollander literally has a gay friend. the figure skater. hayden googles furiously. the figure skater, taylor, is married to a woman. shane is tagged in their wedding photos. so shane hollander has a closeted gay friend in a fake marriage. god, that must be hard. shane is a terrible liar; it must be hard for him to support the union. maybe that’s what the fight was about, like scott knew taylor, like from the closet? wait. no. not a thing. where did hayden even hear taylor was gay from? did he just assume all figure skaters were gay? oh god. hayden’s homophobic. hayden and shane. two homophobic best friends. neither of whom had any intention of seeing moonlight.
mercifully, hayden’s thoughts were slowed by sudden applause. scott was done speaking, apparently.
hayden is not a fix-it guy. he could probably fix things, but jackie & shane are consumate control freaks, so he’s more of a follow-the-explicit-directions-of-his-loved-ones-like-he’s-escaping-a-saw-trap guy. telling jackie about the “homophobic shane thing” is a non-starter, because she is barely post-partum and he thinks jackie may actually put him in a saw trap if he explains the “gay (straight) figure skater thing.” and telling shane. well.
so hayden has to be the fix-it guy.
he’s watched shane neurotically fixate on problems on the road and jackie surgically deconstruct them at home. in either case, hayden knows the first step is research. unfortunately, a lot of the resources on deprogramming homophobia are centered around religion. hayden considers talking to shane about how jesus was actually very cool with sinners but he cannot handle being called “culturally mormon” by shane again.
when he googles homophobia in hockey, there’s a million articles about scott hunter. after reading all of them, hayden thinks maybe being gay is another layer of scott hunter’s mirage of being compelling. the jury in hayden’s brain cannot decide if that’s a homophobic thought.
to add insult to injury, ilya rosanov had apparently been moonlighting as hockey’s own mother fucking theresa. first, the press had caught wind of his “very sportsman-like” visit to shane in the hospital, where the asshole had the gaul to look more than remorseful. then, cliff marleau mentioned in a pre-awards interview that roz ends each game by saying “i love you” to every player and frets over welcome gifts for the rooks, so maybe roz should be in the running for the lady byng. the final blow comes as hayden obsessively reads another article about scott hunter’s gay miracle on ice. scott hunter, asked if any NHL players had sent support his way, said “i don’t want to ruin the guy’s bad reputation, but ilya rozanov has been surprisingly supportive, in his own way.”
hayden technically could reach out to hunter. he has his number. he could do so under the guise of allyship and then ask “hey- congrats on the gay. speaking of, did my best friend hate crime you? if so, any advice on how to make him an ally?” but then, self-serving clandestine support would probably only worsen the original sin. god, hayden is so bad with trolley problems. why couldn’t he be the one tied to the tracks for once?
hayden’s train of thought must hear this wish, and dutifully bows him over with a traitorous epiphany. ilya rozanov would know what to do. rozanov had deconstructed the homophobia in hockey without ever asking jesus or google or scott hunter about it.
before his brain does the kind thing and kills him, hayden texts jj if he knows anyone with ilyas number.
hayden has not been sleeping well. it’s about 20% the “homophobic shane thing” and 80% the “newborn baby thing.” he’s not fully losing his mind, but he must have momentarily misplaced his frontal lobe, because he had asked for ilya rosanov’s number before he had even thought to try talking to shane directly.
shane, apparently, was on a “silent retreat.” if hayden was less of an ally, he would think that’s an awfully gay activity for a homophobe. alas, hayden had recently added call me by your name to his and jackie’s movie night list, so he does not find any irony in shane stewing in homophobic gay silence.
instead, he opens his phone and calls.
shane picks up quickly, and like a good friend and person, asks readily after jackie and amber. maybe hayden really had spiraled over nothing, picking up shane’s bad habits after a decade of roadies. on the other end of the phone, shane is talking.
“yeah and jackie’s good too? is it better than um—“
hayden cuts him off quickly, “can we talk about the hunter fight?”
he thinks the words tumbled out of his mouth too quickly for shane to really catch them, and braces for shane to ask hayden to repeat himself.
“yeah i remember that, that was a tough time.”
he sounds annoyed? pained? hayden cannot parse the tone, nor the words. shane had responded with somewhat of a non-sequitir. oh god. shane doesn’t want to talk about the scott fight because maybe it was —
“sorry hayds my mom is on the other line, i’ll just get rid of her”
only. yuna hollander had called hayden earlier, to ask about jackie and the baby. she told him shane was on a silent retreat and not taking or making calls, and that’s when hayden had first pointedly avoided having the thought that shane hollander sometimes acted pretty gay for a homophobe, but then again don’t all homophobes? like lindsey graham or the bullies from glee. god, hayden’s stream of consciousness was rapidly devolving into floodwaters that would whisk jackie away from ever touching his dick again. not that he only cared about gay people because it got him laid, but it’s a part of the equation. maybe 10%? no. that’s way too high. 2% maximum. the other 98% is for sure empathy-driven human kindness.
“uh sorry man, my mom is so annoying sometimes.”
shane is definitely lying. hayden needs to pivot away from the hunter fight, it clearly made shane nervous. he just needs to ask about literally any gay person.
“sorry - you were saying?”
hayden is not a fix-it guy. he’s a follow directions guy. he can build an ikea shelf, no problem. what would the little cartoon guy in the billy bookcase packet tell him to do?
“mark came out to me.”
hayden, once again, allows the words to be said with no prior strategy developed. shane has met mark, and mark’s wife. mark is not gay, but he did study theatre. god, hayden really needs to check his internalized biases.
“and that’s her middle brother?” shane asks with impeccably bad timing for hayden’s brain, which is stuck on how he’s lucky he’s just okay enough at hockey to go completely unnoticed, because the press would eat him and his cancellable dearth of forethought alive.
“no, jackie’s brother-in-law,” hayden says. case in point.
like a rough scrap for the puck, the only way forward is through. hayden explains that mark, from thanksgiving, had told hayden he was gay. he’d be leaving his wife but the timing was okay because he was going to come stay and help with amber. he spins a rainbow yarn and worries about unspooling it later.
shane reacts…neutrally…? he sounds flustered, and he is both under and over reacting to every new insane thing hayden says. it does not come across as an enthusiastic ally’s reaction. maybe it was the concussion? but nope, shane assures him he’s fine, healed up, while a tide of rising panic comes through the phone line.
at least shane is besotted by his own bigotry. he feels bad enough to rush off the call, an audible anxiety attack taking place. hayden should not feel comforted by the thought of shane hollander, prostrate at the porcelain throne, vomiting his guilty guts out. but he does. shane’s not a bad dude, he is just having a teachable moment.
now that hayden has cracked this case wide open, he calls ilya next.
“da?” comes over the speaker before the second ring.
“hi. uhh. it’s hayden pike. i got your number from, well it doesn’t matter, i got your number.”
“…uh-huh…and why is hayden pike, montreals 15th best player calling me?” he announces it all louder than necessary. hayden imagines him as a middle school thespian, cheating out to the audience.
“shit,” hayden exhales, letting his dignity out with his breath, “okay. i’m going to level with you rozanov, just this once, and only because i am going, well, insane. i need to ask you something. it’s about scott hunter, sort of.”
a pause hangs on the phone; rozanov has forgotten his line. whispers from the wings and some shuffling remind him that’s his queue. hayden wonders who the hell is stage directing.
“i do not know how old he is. they do not let me near carbon dating machine. at least jurassic, maybe older.”
even with the stilted timing, rozanov chirps with enough gravitas that hayden lets a snort out against his better judgement. maybe shane was right, the asshole thing is just a well-performed act. rozanov would make a great nathan detroit.
“what the fuck. jurassic?” hayden said, opting that speaking was less humiliating than imagining rozanov performing sue me in a little pin-striped suit.
“is very famous movie, pike.”
“god, you are making this painfully hard,” this, for some reason, earns a snickered laugh, then a shush from stage right. hayden, bravely, presses on, “i need to ask you about. he said you’ve been good. i think. okay, i think shane fought hunter over the gay thing.”
“the gay thing?” rozanov repeats slow like hayden had placed a bomb on the stage.
“yeah like. i think shane might have fought him,” hayden drops his voice to a whisper, “homophobically.”
rapturous laughter replaces all dialogue. stage directions appear, ‘hayden pike longs for ritual disembowlment.’
“pike. you are so stupid. hollander is not homophobe. he is scared canadian kitten turned to real boy. barely hurts fly. afraid of tuna melts, not gay people. please. never call me again.”
before rozanov hangs up, hayden hears a half-second of a reprimanding voice, “you’re such an—“
for a third act twist, it’s weirdly predictable. hayden knows shane was going to say asshole.
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magic ≠ sword. magic is a tool. and frankly the persistent insistence (looking at you, Uther Pendragon, and by unfortunate narrative inheritance, Arthur) on treating it as though it is inherently a blade is less a moral truth and more a failure of imagination (and, not to be petty, but also a failure of governance).
because here’s the thing: a sword is designed to harm. that is its telos (yes, we’re doing philosophy about a saturday night fantasy show, keep up). you can hang it on a wall, you can ceremonialize it, you can even pass it down as a symbol—but its function remains violence. when you call magic a sword, you are making a claim about its essence: that harm is not an accident of misuse but its natural, inevitable endpoint.
which is…a wild claim, given what we actually see.
enter Merlin (patron saint of “this could have been an email,” except the email is a spell and the recipient is destiny). what does he use magic for, on a day-to-day basis? half the time it’s chores. it’s quietly preventing catastrophe while also, somehow, still having to polish Arthur’s boots (which is a separate injustice we don’t have time to unpack fully, though rest assured it rankles).
magic, in practice, behaves far more like a toolbox.
and tools are morally inert. a hammer can build a house or break a window (or, if you’re particularly unlucky, hit your thumb; morality does not enter into it, only regret). an axe can fell a tree or be weaponized, but we do not, as a society, declare axes ontologically evil and execute carpenters on sight (one hopes). to collapse all possible uses into the worst-case scenario is not prudence
uther voice: “but magic has caused harm before!” yes, and so has literally every technology, skill, and form of knowledge humanity has ever developed. fire burned down a village once; we did not outlaw warmth.
“magic is a sword” camp leans heavily on historical harm as evidence of inherent corruption. but correlation is not causation, and more importantly, context matters. if magic users are hunted, persecuted, and executed, what behaviors are you incentivizing? secrecy. desperation. retaliation. you are, quite literally, manufacturing the very threat you claim to be containing.
violence by magic users, in that framework, starts to look less like proof of innate evil and more like the predictable outcome of systemic oppression (funny how that works, across genres and centuries alike). if every avenue for benign use is criminalized, then the only magic that remains visible is the kind wielded in extremis. and then—surprise—you point to that extremity as justification for further crackdowns. a perfect, self-sustaining loop of bad decisions.
there’s also an epistemic issue here: focusing exclusively on harmful uses produces a distorted dataset. if you only record instances where magic goes wrong, you will inevitably conclude that magic always goes wrong. meanwhile, all the beneficial uses go uncounted because they leave no spectacle behind. it’s a kind of narrative survivorship bias
the “toolbox” perspective insists on a more capacious view. magic is not one thing; it is many things. it scales with the intent, skill, and circumstance of the user. to regulate it as though it were a singular, inherently violent object is intellectually lazy.
(which, again, not to harp on it, but if your entire policy framework can be summarized as “ban it because it’s scary,” you are not exactly winning awards for nuanced statecraft.)
none of this is to say magic can’t be dangerous. of course it can. so can swords, and storms, and politics (especially politics). but danger is not the same as destiny. a thing’s capacity for harm does not define its essence; otherwise we would have to condemn half the world into moral exile, starting with the nearest kitchen knife.
so when Arthur inherits his father’s fear (with a slightly more conflicted expression, granted, but still), what he’s really inheriting is a category error. magic is not a sword to be sheathed or shattered. it’s a system profoundly shaped by the hands that wield it.
and maybe if those hands weren’t constantly forced into hiding, they’d have a lot more room to build something other than the very threats everyone is so busy dreading.
Character duo where one *remembers I don’t like fitting characters into trope boxes* is a completely fleshed out and realised person *remembers treating characters as real people and not story devices written with intent is bad* who is written by the author and *remembers death of the author* uh. And *fumbles and drops my pile of queue cards* ah fuck wait no *the menacing horse* what was that.
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