Andrea1717

Hi! What are your top 5 qaf characters and why?

Ahhhh so hard to narrow it down!!

Um. Well. I'm going to cheat a tiny bit because there are some ties. :P

5) Ben Bruckner

Is he the deepest character on the show? Not exactly. But I loved his character--how he deals with having HIV, how he's such an idealist who stumbles in practicality. That latter part is fairly relatable to me lol. He seems highly confident, but he's insecure about his health, his writing, and more. Yet he also knows that he deserves to be loved and appreciated as he is, flaws and all, and never wavers from this. This belief in turn makes him the perfect match for Michael, a character who waffles between fantasy and reality.

Ben loves Michael for who he is and understands Brian and Michael's sometimes unhealthy bond precisely because of his ideals: everyone should be loved as they are (a major theme of QaF as a whole). He just doesn't really apply that to himself, which is very, well, human. This results in him messing around with steroids, pushing people away at times, clinging at others, and in the end accepting vulnerability and failure as part of being human.

5) Debbie Novotny

I love Debbie. She's kind of the group's wise and loving mom, the voice of conscience and reason and kindness. She's a good person, and the show really dug into that and explored this aspect of her character to a rewarding degree. See, Debbie being so convinced she needs to be a good person is precisely where she's most flawed and thereby what makes her so interesting. Is she a good sister to Vic and mom to not just Michael, but Brian, Emmett, Justin, Ted, etc.? Yes. But she's also super flawed and unable to see past herself sometimes, and that's why she's great.

Debbie defines herself by her relationships with others and is determined to stick up for her loved ones. Unfortunately, that means she sometimes doesn't realize that--while she often does know best, often isn't always, and she has to let go and allow characters like Michael and Vic to live their own lives. It's easier for her to let go with the other boys, but not so much with Michael or Vic, because they're clearly the closest to her.

Debbie concocts this elaborate fantasy father for Michael because she needs to be a good person who married a hero rather than a scared teen who fooled around with a drag queen who wasn't sure of his own identity . But the thing is, she's a good person as she is, despite growing she still has to do. Her choosing to raise Michael with love and acceptance, to stand by Vic and nurse him through the worst of his illness--she's heroic for those things.

I love that the narrative calls Debbie on her "good person" complex. Firstly, she almost lets it interfere with her finding love with Horvath, when the point is that she has to help Horvath grow--and thereby accept that she herself needs to grow. Secondly, of course, when Vic moves out and she has a terrible fight with him, and he dies before they can reconcile.

4) Hunter Novotny-Bruckner

Hunter's iconic, from the classic "YOU F*CKED A MURDERER?" “What’s the big deal, I used a condom” scene to his comments about ending up in jail for opening Ben's letter. He's also a terrified teenager who's been through far more than he should have had to. His journey--how he pushes buttons with Michael and Ben precisely because he fully expects them to give up on him and wants to see how far he can push them and still be welcome--is so very true to trauma, especially in young kids.

Hunter's also very self-aware in ways Michael and Ben really aren't, which makes him a good fit into the family dynamic.

2-3) Michael Novotny

I wrote a whole meta on Michael so there's not a lot to say that I haven't said there, but I will reiterate that Michael gets an unfairly bad rap from the fandom. Like I've barely been in it and seen a lot of negative takes on him that I think do a real disservice to the story as a whole. Michael is a jerk sometimes, sure, and whiny, but he's an integral part of the story and part of the reason Justin and Brian work so well together (as opposed to the hindrance I've seen a lot of takes posit him to be).

2-3) Justin Taylor

Yeah, he and Michael tie and it varies by day, but for today, Justin's got the edge. I love his arc and his flaws. I do wish more had been done with certain plot lines (like the Pink Posse one, which falls into a category of 'makes sense and could work but doesn't develop organically and isn't fully explored').

Justin's a great character because he's not just a representation of sunshine or innocence like he could have been--what honestly most writers would have written the new young initiate to be. He's young, but he also has all the flaws of youth too. He's thereby a great foil for Brian and Michael in that he doesn't actually treat people much better than either of them do.

The show never glorifies Justin's immaturity, but neither does it patronize him. His wants and goals are taken just as seriously as the older characters, and his choice to love Brian forms the crux of what the show says love is. He's treated like a human being first before being a teenager/inner child, all while his teenager-ness is never denied (99.99% of teenage characters do NOT act like any teenagers I know; Justin absolutely does).

1) Brian Kinney

Is it really surprising to anyone? He's the show's central character and one of my favorite archetypes: the Byronic hero. Mad, bad, dangerous to know, but with the additional element of a heart of gold under all those layers.

What I love about him as a character is how contradictory and human he is. He's really a wounded child who is a hedonist to avoid going after what he wants (love, justification to be alive). The crux of his issues come down to how his father told him that he wished Brian was never born and tried to coerce his mother into having an abortion. Imo, there's a part of Brian that genuinely fears/even at times believes that he should never have existed (hence his constant wrestling with the idea of growing old/dying and yet weird attraction to dying young/quasi ideation like jumping on the edge of a roof in episode 1). Brian's determined to make his existence known as part of an attempt to prove he does deserve to live because he desperately wants to.

Seeing him come to accept love--not just accept being loved and admitting he loved, but knowing that time (always his biggest fear) wouldn't change it--that was a beautiful arc. He's really well written.

Also, shout outs to: Ted, Blake, Emmett, Melanie, and Lindsay. Ted I think is in the top group for well-written characters especially, and Melanie just won a special place in my heart after she screamed “I don’t CARE what men think about their dicks!” In episode 3. Mood Mel mood.