I disagree.
The characters involved happen to be gay, but there’s nothing in the scenarios that are exclusive to gay couples. The same messages can be taken from it even if they were a hetero couple.
Hetero couples do have the added difficulty of scoring contraceptives in a post apocalyptic world though.
And gay people are safer without enemas and douches? Nevermind hiv treatments?
Lets be real. In a post apocalyptic world HIV will go untreated and with that it will be a quick death sentence. Especially if we are talking about a zombie infection making rounds.
there’s nothing in the scenarios that are exclusive to gay couples.
There definitely are. Before the collapse of society, these two characters would not have been allowed to marry in the place where they live. It was only after societal collapse that they were free to be their true selves without discrimination or government oversight to tell them that their love was wrong.
It would not be the same story if it was a hetero couple, and it is dismissive to the unique challenges faced by gay people to suggest it would be.
Does it really matter though? Because from what I watched that episode was what someone would do for love. And to be honest, I don’t think it would’ve had as big as an impact with a hetero couple.
I mean I think that’s the point of the episode. Love is love.
I just disagree with the idea that the context doesn’t matter, because heterosexual love and homosexual love were not viewed the same before societal collapse and so it wouldn’t have been liberating in the same way for a hetero couple.
Before the collapse of society, these two characters would not have been allowed to marry in the place where they live. It was only after societal collapse that they were free to be their true selves without discrimination or government oversight to tell them that their love was wrong.
Before the societal collapse, these people were early teenagers infants, if that. They never lived an adult life under such a regime, and have just as much an understanding about life in such a regime as hetero couples that did live under it: they probably heard about it, and know that on paper it was bad, but they never had to live it.
Ellie is 14 when we first meet her, some 6 months 20 years after the collapse. She has zero understanding of what it was like to live under the pre-infection government.
Edit: initially got the time jump wrong. It’s 20 years not 6 months
This whole thread is about the two middle aged guys who we meet somewhere around halfway through the first season, not the reveal that Ellie is gay near the end.
