I’m going to start this by saying that, despite this being an apparently unpopular opinion, I don’t think Harper is a bad person and I don’t think Abby should have left her, even for Riley. I think that’s an oversimplification that contradicts a lot of the point of the movie and a lot of what I’m going to talk about, and also, characters, like people, are allowed to fuck up and not have it ruin them forever as long as they make a point of apologizing and doing better in the future. I’m going to address the specifics in a bit, but I just needed to say this before I go farther, in case that’s going to be a dealbreaker for you or something. I don’t want to argue with you about that. I don’t want to argue at all. I was going to write this anyway, even before I learned there was a controversy, because the complexities aren’t just related to that.
Drift partner had been extremely psyched for Happiest Season. Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart are two of her faves, and it’s directed by lesbian icon Clea DuVall. She’d been following it eagerly, so I sort of ended up following it by extension. It also really hit home for her and us because, as I’ve said before, she wasn’t out to her family. We’ve been married almost four years now, but her family is very conservative and she was worried about their reaction and if this news would mean they cut her out of their lives. I literally went to their house for Christmas one year (just for a morning/afternoon) and we sat side-by-side on the couch, smiling and nodding and waiting until no one was looking to quickly squeeze each other’s hands.
And you know what? I never even considered being upset about it. Would it have been easier if she could just tell her parents? Yeah. Did I want her to be able to come out so she’d stop worrying and we wouldn’t have to hastily take our rings off every time we went to their house? Yeah, of course. But it wasn’t my decision to make, and I knew she wasn’t putting it off out of anything more than genuine fear about her family’s response. I didn’t feel like, as Stewart’s Abby says at one point in the movie and also as a commenter on the Captain Awkward post drift partner once submitted about the situation, she was forcing me back into the closet. We just didn’t say or do certain things in certain company, because she genuinely didn’t know if she’d be safe (and based on things her parents had said about gay* people in general she didn’t exactly have high hopes).
Full story here.