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lb_leeRogan: In my sickness, I posted that picture of Bob's "Subtext is Overrated" shirt and didn't explain the context of it! In summary: it was advice he gave me the first time he ever met me (though NOT the first time I ever met him).
It was 2007 my time, early 2002 in his. Time between our worlds doesn't match up, and it also doesn't pass in the same say, so by Bob's reckoning of events, this was the first time he ever met me, in a strange dream he had soon after first getting in Grey's pants (which, admittedly, he felt conflicted about, in the "oh no, did I truly just fuck the poster boy of Big Brother?" way). He was suffocating in a Don't Ask Don't Tell workplace, furious at being forcibly shoved into the closet, AGAIN, after all the years he'd spent clawing his way out of it.
As for me, in 2007, I was once again trying to write the story that became Red Roses, Old Horses. I had written the bulk of it in 2005, only to get caught with a kissing scene by my mother, and well, after that, I excised the queerness and did my damnedest to make the whole thing straight... at which point the story completely stalled out. The whole POINT of it was two people getting together. After a year and a half, I was starting to realize that... but I was TERRIFIED of writing (BEING) queer and getting caught again. So I took a page out of Jennifer Tanner's book and wrote a conversation between me and Bob.
Bob mostly trolled me, in a very, "you want me to WHAT? Who are you? How old are you?" kind of way. He had zero patience for my teenage hand-wringing, even less for my half-baked attempts to explain why homoerotic subtext was so much more Literary and Good than that icky gross overt queerness, leading to the following exchange between us:
Me: "But... subtext..."
Bob: "Overrated."
It proved to be one of the best pieces of advice anyone has ever given me as a storyteller. So many of my old writings, it turned out, was me trying to avoid saying what was truly going on, trying to subtext my way out of all my realities, because I felt like nobody would ever read what I truly wanted to write. (Obviously, that has proven false.)
Obviously, Bob won that argument. He didn't have a choice about the closet at his workplace, but he put his foot down when it came to the art I made about him. He is a self-proclaimed "renegade furry from the Internet fuckpit," his kinky bisexuality has been a core part of his life and love, and he wasn't giving that up, not for anybody.
Bob almost completely forgot the silly dream the moment he woke up, except for a sense that no, he was going to pursue Grey, no matter how hard the consequences bit him in the ass (which oh, they did). By the time he PROPERLY met me, awake and lucid, a few years later by his reckoning (and a few years earlier by mine), he remembered nothing, only that I seemed oddly familiar.
So that's the story of why I made Bob a "subtext is overrated" shirt in the Bi Pride colors, in honor of some of the best advice someone ever gave me. Thanks, old man. When the closet walls encroached, you taught me to kick out a wall.
It was 2007 my time, early 2002 in his. Time between our worlds doesn't match up, and it also doesn't pass in the same say, so by Bob's reckoning of events, this was the first time he ever met me, in a strange dream he had soon after first getting in Grey's pants (which, admittedly, he felt conflicted about, in the "oh no, did I truly just fuck the poster boy of Big Brother?" way). He was suffocating in a Don't Ask Don't Tell workplace, furious at being forcibly shoved into the closet, AGAIN, after all the years he'd spent clawing his way out of it.
As for me, in 2007, I was once again trying to write the story that became Red Roses, Old Horses. I had written the bulk of it in 2005, only to get caught with a kissing scene by my mother, and well, after that, I excised the queerness and did my damnedest to make the whole thing straight... at which point the story completely stalled out. The whole POINT of it was two people getting together. After a year and a half, I was starting to realize that... but I was TERRIFIED of writing (BEING) queer and getting caught again. So I took a page out of Jennifer Tanner's book and wrote a conversation between me and Bob.
Bob mostly trolled me, in a very, "you want me to WHAT? Who are you? How old are you?" kind of way. He had zero patience for my teenage hand-wringing, even less for my half-baked attempts to explain why homoerotic subtext was so much more Literary and Good than that icky gross overt queerness, leading to the following exchange between us:
Me: "But... subtext..."
Bob: "Overrated."
It proved to be one of the best pieces of advice anyone has ever given me as a storyteller. So many of my old writings, it turned out, was me trying to avoid saying what was truly going on, trying to subtext my way out of all my realities, because I felt like nobody would ever read what I truly wanted to write. (Obviously, that has proven false.)
Obviously, Bob won that argument. He didn't have a choice about the closet at his workplace, but he put his foot down when it came to the art I made about him. He is a self-proclaimed "renegade furry from the Internet fuckpit," his kinky bisexuality has been a core part of his life and love, and he wasn't giving that up, not for anybody.
Bob almost completely forgot the silly dream the moment he woke up, except for a sense that no, he was going to pursue Grey, no matter how hard the consequences bit him in the ass (which oh, they did). By the time he PROPERLY met me, awake and lucid, a few years later by his reckoning (and a few years earlier by mine), he remembered nothing, only that I seemed oddly familiar.
So that's the story of why I made Bob a "subtext is overrated" shirt in the Bi Pride colors, in honor of some of the best advice someone ever gave me. Thanks, old man. When the closet walls encroached, you taught me to kick out a wall.
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Date: 2026-01-29 08:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-29 07:39 pm (UTC)-Another renegade furry (literally, I have fur) from the internet fuckpit