I just want to take a moment to appreciate Archive 81’s specific brand of LGBT representation and how thankful I am for it.
Most podcasts either take place in a fantasy world where homophobia and transphobia don’t exist (Penumbra, WTNV) or a normal world, but the queer characters don’t experience these kind of things in the stories being told (Bright Sessions). This is not a bad thing. Too many queer stories are about the struggle of our lives, and how things like homophobia affect us, and it’s great to hear stories without those things.
Losing that stuff also means for a lot of stories that you lose the feeling of real gay life. What Archive 81 excels at in all of its stories is making all the (human) characters feel like real people, all the stories feeling like real occurrences, despite simultaneously being stories of fear and eldritch horror. This includes the gay characters. They have their own personalities and stories and lives that aren’t centred around their sexuality, but the story isn’t all “they’re just like straight people but they happen to be gay”. A lesbian character is still asked whether her long term relationship with a woman is just a phase by a stranger. An older gay man recounts what the gay community and culture was like decades ago in NYC while he tells the story of a magical man he dated. When asked by a morally grey telephone booth if realizing that a guy he’s dating is just like his father is a negative or positive realization, he says negative.
A lot of this is stuff that isn’t universal to everyone, it’s very specific to gay/bisexual people. The show never shies away from these parts of their gay characters, while also making sure it isn’t their defining personality/character trait. Despite it being a horror/fantasy fiction podcast, it’s also been some of the most true-to-life representations of being gay that I’ve ever heard. So once again, thank you very much.
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