Georgia Coley

There's an early moment in the new Little House on the Prairie series that I keep thinking about. 

Last Tuesday, on the final day of Pride Month, Matthew Vines of The Reformation Project published an opinion piece for The New York Times called “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” In it, he argues that in a national landscape growing increasingly hostile toward LGBTQ+ people, our movement would be better served by pivoting away from the word “queer”—both because of its umbrella quality, which “lacks clear limiting principles,” and because of its “adversarial charge” that implies we are, by nature, subversive and anti-normative. “Because the word ‘queer’ can describe any departure from social norms,” Vines argues, “it becomes an open door through which almost anyone can walk.” Because of what Vines reads as an overly expansive nature within the queer category, the public’s trust and understanding of the core parameters of what it means to be gay are being eroded. Vines asserts, instead, that his own self-acceptance came from acknowledging that “there is nothing inherently radical or subversive about being gay.” As such, he does not wish to be described as queer, with all the unwanted implications it brings.

There’s a moment in The Drama that has stuck with me. In the midst of an existential spiral about his fiancée Emma’s (Zendaya) past,  Charlie (Robert Pattinson) talks with some less-than-understanding friends and tries to somehow contextualize and produce empathy for her actions. He latches onto something he heard in passing about Emma’s childhood: that she had a neighbor who died in a car accident. The way that he retells the story, though, makes it sound as though this event was a traumatic origin story that totally reshaped her young psyche—even enough to explain her turn toward fantasies of violence later in childhood.

As Charlie retells the story, images flash on the screen imagining different versions of the event; the car crashing into a tree in a neighborhood; young Emma watching the crash firsthand; Emma grieving alone with no one to help her process it.

“I have a purpose. If you think that it’s some kind of blessing, it’s not,” says Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme. “It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.”

That very specific thing, for Marty, is the nearly impossible task of somehow pulling enough money out of thin air to pay his debts and fund his trip to compete in a ping-pong championship taking place in Japan. Ironically, Marty Supreme features very little actual ping pong. The majority of the movie is about one particularly audacious young man going to often comically absurd (and morally dubious) lengths to “achieve his dreams,” and more specifically, to somehow acquire the money to fund those dreams.

“This world is intricately stitched together, boys. Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things,” muses William H. Macy’s Arn Peeples, an aging tree logger in Train Dreams. Throughout their ongoing work on the construction of the Spokane International Railway, laborers like Arn occasionally ruminate on their place in a broader human tale of hubris and glory, though they don’t have all the answers.

Indeed, the world is intricately stitched together. And the same could be said about the film itself, though, moment by moment, it gives the feeling of a wandering walk in the woods. Much like Arn, director Clint Bentley and screenwriter Greg Kwedar seem aware of their lack of answers—but find asking the questions worthwhile anyway.

MY FIRST EXPOSURE to writer Lamorna Ash was the thumbnail image for an interview on YouTube, giant text emblazoning her face with the words “The Case for Christianity.” I must admit, I was skeptical. Granted, I am a Christian who has certainly “made the case” for the profound reality of Jesus of Nazareth now and again—but recently, apologetic arguments and “hardened atheist turned Christian” testimonials have left a sour taste in my mouth.

Perhaps it’s the way that media in that sphere tends to be loaded with culture warrior “Christian Apologist DESTROYS Atheist Snowflake” language. Maybe it’s that, frequently, the case for Christianity actually tends to be the case for Western dominance, whiteness, and heteronormativity. Or maybe it’s even simpler than that: Often, the sheer dogmatic certainty with which these “convert influencers” tend to speak just doesn’t feel honest. Either way, as a queer believer, the genre usually feels out of step with my daily walk.

Nevertheless, I decided to give this particular interview a listen—and Lamorna Ash was nothing like what I’d anticipated. A young and openly queer British woman with a lyrical voice and a heart for Palestine and trans people? This was not the person I’d traditionally expected to make the “case for Christianity.”

“I keep hoping that gets easier,” one character in The Long Walk says, shortly after witnessing the gruesome execution of a companion. Still visibly shaken, Cooper Hoffman’s character Ray Garraty replies: “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

A 2025 film adapted from the 1979 novel by Stephen King, The Long Walk depicts a dystopian near future where young boys from all over the United States voluntarily compete in a contest to walk at 3 mph continuously across hundreds of miles—with those who repeatedly fall below the pace being shot dead until there is one winner of glory and riches.

 “At their best, my videos are life-changing,” CJ The X tells me, with a laugh that acknowledges the immensity of the claim. From the mouths of many other internet creators, this statement might sound ludicrous—but the comments on CJ’s channel will reveal that they are not exaggerating.  

“Every CJ The X video gives me about 5 metaphysical panic attacks before giving me some sort of closure,” one commenter remarked.