I think I told you guys awhile back that a group of us at work are all watching QaF (or, in my case, re-watching it) together. We meet for lunch once a week and obsess over every detail - I look forward to it like you would not believe. In the beginning, we decided to "assign" ourselves to different characters, which was made easy by the fact that there are five of us. We threw dice, and I got Ted (which I was really happy about - I love Ted - actually I would've been happy with any of them). Everyone is content with their "assignment" except for L, who has Brian. She absolutely loathes him and has from the first backroom scene in the very beginning. Also, she's the mom of a 17 year-old boy who's just started testing his wings. Things strike close to home for her. Even though she hates Brian (and wants to adopt Justin), she's great at understanding Brian. Because the rest of us fall on the spectrum from liking Brian to worshiping the celluloid he walks on (that would be me), we miss things that L picks up on (most of them not very flattering).

Her biggest gripe about Brian is that he's obsessed with masculinity, which confuses her because he's gay (she admits not knowing any "aggressively" masculine gay men). In her opinion, Brian's obsession with what it means to be a man is inherently misogynistic because he thinks of masculinity in terms of binaries: manly vs. feminine, homosexuals as opposed to "faggots," gay men vs. lesbians, even tops vs. bottoms. Calling Michael the "little wifey" is to Brian the worst kind of insult. To be a man is to not be at all like a woman. Women and "faggots" cry; real men don't. Women nest; real men don't. Women show affection not associated with sex; real men don't. Women want babies; real men don't. Despite his contempt for norms, Brian is a caveman when it comes to gender.

My friend also thinks Brian is both psychologically and sexually abusing Justin. Psychologically, I can understand, but sexually? She says Brian is preventing Justin from discovering his true authentic self, both in bed and out of it. She told us between bites of garden salad with low-cal Italian dressing that if she found out there was a "Brian" in her son's life, she would track him down, cut off his dick and stuff it down his throat. (Seriously, she really did say that - it was disconcerting). She was absolutely furious when Jennifer "gave" Brian her son - so much so that she almost stopped watching the show. She ended up sticking with it because she loves Michael and Emmett and because she feels (admittedly irrationally) that she "needs to keep an eye on Justin because no one else will."

Finally, and most alarmingly, she doesn't think Gale is a gift straight from God. Lol.

Anyway, I was curious what you guys think.