Heated Rivalry Is Emotional Counter-Programming

In a cultural moment defined by violence and cruelty, the kind of storytelling this show delivers is an act of resistance in itself.

I never imagined that the antidote to watching two years of genocide would be two men fucking their way toward love. I also chose this particular event to be my last collection of words I’ll post in 2025. What a year! What a time to be alive. And what a lesson to arrive at in the closing moments.

For the past two years, I haven’t been able to write about anything beyond the dystopian reality our world has descended into. I’m a cultural writer — I’ve spent nearly fifteen years writing about film, television, and culture — but in the face of the political catastrophe unfolding around us, everything else began to feel trivial, even obscene.

The constant stream of injustice, death, and manufactured narratives consumed all space. There was no room left in me for anything else. Nothing felt worthy of attention while mass suffering played out in real time, normalized and justified before our eyes.

I kept waiting for something, anything, that could pull me out of that paralysis. Something that c…