Literally the funniest divide in Reverie’s reception was all the gay people agreeing Kane, who is gay, was at worst kinda prickly but always defensible, and all the straight ladies being like “I have never known a gay to act like this, in fact I have never known a gay at all.” https://twitter.com/kevinthewriter/status/1250082194330189825

Portrayals of gay boys written by cis ladies tend me be kinda snuggly, GBF material. A commodity imo.

When I write Kane, I’m not writing your commodified queerness. I’m writing a hero. He has things to do; I’m sorry he can’t go shopping with you and listen to you ponder texts.

Me, a gay man, writing Kane, a gay boy, also activates a certain panic in people who don’t realize they still pathologies homosexuality.

Cis Het ladies don’t usually deal with the specter of perversion that all queer people writing queer characters have to engage w/ constantly.

That must be so nice.

This may surprise you but I think cis het ladies can write gay men. I just think that they do a very bad job at it, very often, and no one notices because they're the ones who are allowed to do it most.

"how do you know they're cis, or het even?"

I don't! I don't know what people don't tell me. And I don't particularly care. The optics of obfuscation are a privilege I've never had. Optics sell books, cast away perversion, open doors.

And a bad job is still a bad job, so.