hey! so you’ve mentioned francis’ sexual traumas a few times and while they are brought up a little bit in the book i still can’t pinpoint his exact situation. could you talk more about your feelings on the matter?

tw: sexual trauma and generally bad childhoods

yeah, canon really doesn't give us much about the wild life and times of its cast but it does crucially tell us about his childhood stay in what was basically an institution. and francis himself tells richard outright that the kids there were coerced to fabricate their sordid sexual misconduct just to placate the adults. from what ik abt that type of place back then & the subpar parenting vibes olivia gives i don't doubt francis was exposed to very adult concepts of sexuality, relationships, and mental issues way too young.

the rest of it is just me riffing on backstory, but i imagine given the kind of culture and society he grows up in, not to mention the inherent shaming and confusion in that space associated with his being born of his sister-mom (in airquotes) who had a teen fling with a nobody and then whisked him chaotically around the globe while his grandparents raised them both, francis has subzero shot of going into any relationships with a healthy mindset. not to mention hes growing up definitively gay in the 70s. all of his relationships are clandestine. the only canonical one we see is with an ambiguously straight guy who only hooks up with him drunk and we later find out said guy turns very ugly when he's drunk. and we know francis maintains that relationship long after all we see of charles-francis is charles abusing him verbally while francis takes it.

if we're veering a little further from canon my 2 cents are that francis' early sexual history undoubtedly includes very dubious firsts with people who should not be sleeping with him, closeted teachers or older students etc. i don't imagine his formative experiences were good for his psyche given what he settles for later.

that's not to say every single encounter he's ever had was mired in tragedy. he is evidently genuinely flirtatious and refreshingly frank about it for the times when you think about the moves he makes on richard- i would optimistically venture that this shows he's had fun with his flings too. maybe even charles, before it all went south. who knows what his relationship with kim was like before his grandfather caught them. but as a rule given francis Does live in fear of being caught out by his surrogate parental unit and his anxiety / paranoia is generally exacerbated exponentially by the murders i don't think he has a great chance of having had any meaningful, long-term, open-your-heart connections, at least not post hampden. not because historical gayness dooms you to furtive dark rooms but because that's francis' canonical cross to bear, at least by close of canon.