---
layout:          post
title:           "SEAS Below Decks 5 - Found Family in Queer POC Narrative"
date:            2022-10-11 11:00:00 -0400
episode_type:      ["special", "belowdecks"]
tags:            []
voiced:          []
categories:			"tf"
podcasts: ["tf"]
title_prefix:	"SEAS"
prev_categories: ["tf"]
prev_prefixes: ["SEAS"]
prev_episode:	['006']
prev_episode_num:		['006']
prev_episode_title:		["Lay Day"]
next_categories: ["tf"]
next_prefixes: ["SEAS"]
next_episode:	['007']
next_episode_num:		['007']
next_episode_title:		["Shore Leave"]
episode_title:   'Below Decks 5 - Found Family in Queer POC Narrative'
episode_number:  '006.1'
summary:         "Below the decks of the <i>Netaonsom</i> we get a peek into what makes the ship sail: Welcome to Below Decks!<br/><br/>In this special behind the scenes series we'll be diving deep into the process of bringing <i>Trice Forgotten</i> to life. Today, enjoy a discussion between Series Creator Nemo Martin and Rusty Quill's Head of Inclusion/Sensitivity Consultant Helen Gould on Found Family in Queer POC Narrative."
content_flags:   ["Discrimination", "Stereotypes", "Queerphobia", "Discussions of: oppression, familial abandonment", "Mentions of: misgendering, gatekeeping"]
acast_url:       https://shows.acast.com/trice-forgotten/episodes/below-decks-5-found-family-in-queer-poc-narrative
formats:
official:        true
unfinished:      true
---

#### NEMO

Hello. Welcome to the fifth episode of Below Decks, where we dig into some of the research questions, stories, and generally tangential interesting things that went into making *Trice Forgotten.* I'm Nemo, my pronouns are they/them, and I'm the creator and lead writer of the series.

This is coming out after episode six of the podcast, "Lay Day." So we've just delved more into Alestes's past with Anh and Gammon, and we've had the ship's crew taking care of an ill and ailing Alestes. Fittingly, today we'll be talking about queer found families of color, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Helen Gould. Could you introduce yourself with your pronouns and tell us a bit about what you do/your relationship to this show? 

#### HELEN

Hi, my name is Helen. My pronouns are he, she, and they, in no particular order. My relationship to this show is: I do play a guard briefly.

#### NEMO

Hell yeah. Strongest role. 

#### HELEN

Vital. Vital. Vital to --

#### NEMO

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that guard later. Oof. When we get to them... oh my God. 

#### HELEN

Such a character arc. I'm also Rusty Quill's Head of Inclusion. And on the side I am a writer, editor, sensitivity consultant, all that kind of stuff.

#### NEMO

Amazing. So yeah, today we're gonna have a hopefully fairly fun question about queer found families of color. I say "fun" with that voice because we started talking about our topics beforehand and we were like, "Ooh, how messy is this gonna get?"

So I guess the first framing question is, Helen, do you have some pieces of media with queer found families of color/... doesn't have to be of color just yet, either or both queer found families that you particularly enjoy watching, listening, reading. 

#### HELEN

I mean, I am fairly deep into *Our Flag Means Death* fandom at the moment. Which I'll definitely call queer found family, some of color, some of not. Does that make grammatical sense? It doesn't matter. That is very on topic 'cause that's pirates as well.

#### NEMO

It is very on topic!

#### HELEN

And there are lots of different relationships, both romantic and platonic, in that show, that I really, really appreciate. Okay, spoilers for *Our Flag Means Death:* obviously there is Stede and Ed, there is Lucius and Pete, there's Olu and Jim and everyone else has lots of... My head just went, "There's the Scottish guy and his seagull." Well, I don't think that counts. 

#### NEMO

Um, that's a queer found family if I've ever seen one. He takes care of those seagulls like *family.*

#### HELEN

Yes.

#### NEMO

More than family. 

#### HELEN

Yes, it's true.

I think one of the things I would like to raise about that, is that one of the very interesting things about *Our Flag Means Death* is that people are in different genres, essentially. Blackbeard enters and is part of a typical dark pirate drama kind of thing, but very quickly adapts to Stede and the rest of that crew's more sitcom ways. And then when Izzy turns up, Izzy cannot adapt to that. And so Izzy is always trying to drag Ed back into dark drama, "cutting off people's toes" kind of thing.

And I think that's a really interesting contrast, I guess, because as well -- I'm thinking of this completely on the fly. I think that is an interesting contrast, because there also is, these days, often a tension between light and fluffy queer narratives and darker, more complex, nuanced queer narratives.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

So it's interesting that we have both of those really happening in that show, though obviously very heavily leading towards comedy. I don't know if that answers your question at all in the slightest.

#### NEMO

Yeah. It was, uh, "What queer found families are you currently thinking about?" So that's, yeah, you answered it.

I really like *Our Flag Means Death*, I mean, obviously, and one thing that I really liked about it is the side friendships of all of the side characters. Mostly the characters of color who are like supporting each other.

#### HELEN

Mhm. Yes.

#### NEMO

One thing that I have liked about *Our Flag Means Death* is that, just as the queerness is never the butt of the joke, the race conversations have never been the butt of the joke. Whiteness is the butt of the joke in all of those scenes and the pyramid scheme episode.

#### HELEN

I really liked that.

#### NEMO

It was so good and it was just, I mean -- I was talking to my friend about it and I was like, "There are multiple Black male characters who talk to each other and support each other!"

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

Like, that's also not something that you see in things. It reminds me of when *Brooklyn 99* was coming out and Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Rosa Diaz, was talking about how she heard that Melissa Fumero had been already cast as Amy Santiago and she was like, "Oh, well, I'm not gonna get the role, then, because there's already one Latina actress in the show. There can't be two of us in the main cast."

And yeah, the idea that -- the token thing of, "Oh, there's one of us in the show, so that means that there can't be any others of us." 'Cause there can't be plurality in ideas of what Asianness means or Blackness means between huge communities of people.

#### HELEN

Yeah. Have you watched any of *The L Word: Generation Q?*

#### NEMO

I haven't. 

#### HELEN

Okay. All right. I just finished watching the second season of that in the past couple of days. And that's really interesting because it's still problematic in some ways, but it is also clearly an attempt to address some of the much more problematic things from the original *L Word* series.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

Again, I dunno if you've seen that. 

#### NEMO

No, I haven't. But I've heard interesting mixed things about it. I mean, I feel like it comes into that thing I get of what you were saying about, like, what queer media exists, whether it has to be irreverential comedy or super serious, a 24 film. 

#### HELEN

I mean the interesting thing about *The L Word* is that it is nice, it's more of a soap opera than anything, but it changes depending on what season you're looking at. So in the original *L Word,* the first season is really -- it feels really indie and interesting and like a cult TV show. Then once that came out, I think they probably got a lot more funding and stuff -- they commissioned a whole theme song, which I hate but is really catchy. But *The L Word* is set in LA.

#### NEMO

Okay.

#### HELEN

And the vast majority of the principal cast is white in that original season. There's Bet, who is mixed-race; there's Kit, her sister who is not mixed-race, who is played by Pam Greer. There's Carmen, who is Latina. There's the person Bet has an affair with -- Chantel, maybe, is what she's called. There's Tasha, who's Black. And I think that's almost it. Of a series that went -- like, it went for six seasons.

They also had, uh, they attempted a story about transition and transness and had this character Max just treated *awfully,* very, very badly. And he ends up getting pregnant and it's a whole horrible thing.

And it's like -- the point is, there's a lot of issues with it. And I think that the reboot with *Generation Q* very much tries to address that, because they again have a trans man character played by a trans guy; Leo Chang, I think his name is.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

And some of the main relationships are between women of colour and there's a lot more consideration of that. And there are entire conversations in Spanish or in Arabic, I think, because there are a whole two Persian characters.

#### NEMO

Whoa. Um, oh my gosh.

#### HELEN

That also, I think, counts for me despite the various kind of problems with it in the second season, it does start to really tackle with some of the ideas around race because some of the characters from the initial run are in this as well. So Bet is still there, and she has a daughter called Angie, who is much more visibly Black than Bet is. And they actually have a conversation about this, about how this means that they travel the world in very different ways.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

I think Bet says something like, you know, I understand that, you know, white people sometimes assume that I'm Italian or whatever.

#### NEMO

Mhm.

#### HELEN

And Angie's donor is a dark-skinned Black man, and there's this whole conversation about how Angie wants to meet him and that's important to her, to see people who do actually look more like her. And anyway, there's a lot of really interesting in-depth stuff there. There's literal family dynamics going on there because we're following Angie, who was born in the first run, and everyone was like, "Oh my gosh, she's going to grow up with a whole host of queer moms. It's gonna be great." And she has turned out pretty well. I'm very proud of Angie. 

#### NEMO

That's, I'm glad -- I was thinking about the intergenerational thing.

#### HELEN

Yes.

#### NEMO

And in my brain, like trying to be like, "Below Deck. Okay, *Trice Forgotten.* How can I link this back? I'm a host, that's what my job is!" But I was thinking about the intergenerational thing and I think it's, someone pointed out that within the first seven minutes of the first episode of *Trice Forgotten,* you've already got two queer Black people talking about their queerness as slightly tangential to the story, but not really. And they are of the generation above our protagonists. So it's Baker and Elizabeth both talking about --

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

And how Alestes has been brought up in a very queer environment of -- I mean, the stereotype of a found family narrative is that an orphan is brought up among a ragtag group of people. That is how Alestes was brought up. And in "Lay Day" we started to see...

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

...Gammon's part of that.

#### HELEN

Mhm.

#### NEMO

And how that's often, I don't know -- like, in *Trice Forgotten,* it's a point of contention for Alestes. It's not always a positive thing, that she's had multiple influences from quite a few people who consider themselves her father figure and that she has to deal with that.

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

I think for me, the idea of queer found family also comes from this desire to see queer older people taking care of younger queer people. 'Cause that is not something that we -- that was broken because of the AIDS crisis.

#### HELEN

Yes.

#### NEMO

And was, and is continuing to be broken by this idea that certain demographics of queer people have to stay among themselves. And we've kind of shifted this idea of hegemony to, "if you are this, then you have to stay with this group of people." And so when...

Yeah, there's no real path I guess -- or we've broken the path -- for queer people to talk to younger, queer people. And so I'm saying this and realizing at the same time that I'm like, "Oh yeah, it's nice that Alestes at least does have -- queerness is not something that Alestes has to worry about because the people that she grew up in and around gave her that knowledge."

#### HELEN

I feel like maybe part of what you're saying there is that if we are relating this to real life and modern times and such, I feel like there is a big gap of understanding from maybe some of the younger queer generation about how different things were, even in the Nineties, to how they are now. And obviously we've still got so, so far to go, but I cannot imagine having explicit queer relationships in kids' cartoons when I was growing up.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

Um, yeah, that would just be unheard of, especially. Um, and when I was at school, I think Section 28 was still in effect for at least some of the time I was at school. And that is where, um, teachers were not allowed to tell you about The Gays.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

Because obviously children could not be The Gay. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah. That would be unheard of. 

#### HELEN

Yeah. But obviously I knew since I was in like year five and I had a crush on my teacher.

It is also interesting thinking about how in real life as well -- I don't know if you've experienced this, but, isolated when I was at school, whereas the people who are sort of misfits from the typical what's seen as the norm do tend to gravitate together. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. Yeah. 

#### HELEN

Yeah. I think what I'm trying to say is, it was rough. It was rough growing up in the Nineties, even though that was only 20 years ago. Yeah. 

#### NEMO

Uh, yeah. 

#### HELEN

We've come such a long way. Like it was such a big deal for people to come out back then.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And it still is a big deal for people to come out, but it's much more common.

#### NEMO

Mm. Yeah.

I was talking to my cousin who is just turned 18 and like, I came out as trans to my family and to be honest, it wasn't super horrific or anything. I was fairly lucky. But I know that her parents are very -- were the most on-the-fence about it. And my cousin has just started using she and they pronouns on Instagram and Snapchat and all of the TikTok -- I'm not that old, but I sound so old when I'm like, hand the Tok. Uh, and I was like, "Oh, if you ever wanna have a conversation about gender, if you ever wanna -- if you ever need some advice or anything. I've been out to our family for 10 years now. I can fully support you." And they were like, "All right."

I was like, if -- when I was your age I would've killed to have someone in our family who was also trans. Like I don't -- or nonbinary. And I'm so glad that that is the case for them, that they were like, "Oh, it's so offa now to be non-binary." Like, I'm only 27, and for me, the huge shift between growing up there is that huge shift that has happened even in the couple of years just below me.

#### HELEN

I get what you mean. I'm so, so happy for the younger generation, but there's also a part of me that's like, "Hold onto this."

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

Because it can be taken away and people are trying to take it away. And so if you don't know that you have to fight for it, then you can easily lose it. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. And when I was thinking of things to say on this episode, I was trying to think of queer found families and how that was influential, I guess, to my writing. I was like, that's surely something that might come up. And I was like, what were my favorite films? I was a kid and it was *Lilo and Stitch,* and I really loved *Lilo and Stitch.* 'Cause it was about two siblings who had to care for each other, and then a whole group of people who were older than them but were alien to their way of life were trying to help them survive, but were just so clueless. And so it was a lot of give-and-take and a lot of the, you know, Lilo and Nani having to grow up too early and be allowed to be children or being allowed to have fun because they gradually come to trust that these people around them are genuinely there to take care of them. I feel like the idea of allowing yourself to be taken care of is a huge thing.

#### HELEN

Yes. I think so. And I think that's a really important 'cause I, I don't know if you can ever feel completely taken care of if you are constantly keeping a big secret from a parental figure.

#### NEMO

Mm. Yeah.

#### HELEN

So like, I'm still not out to my mom in any of the ways.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

Some of my cousins know or have guessed. I told my dad and, uh, he literally took that to the grave. So we'll always be grateful for that.

#### NEMO

Uh-huh. 

#### HELEN

But it's like, there's a barrier there that your parental figure doesn't know is there, and you have to hold that by yourself. And I think that there must be such a freedom in not having to do that, or not feeling like you have to do that.

#### NEMO

Yeah. And I like to imagine that the characters in *Trice Forgotten,* most of them have never had to bear the weight of being in the closet in a certain way because they do live in this world that I've created for them where being out is not something that they really have to worry about -- one, because they didn't feel like that was particularly interesting to rehash; two, because expanding the idea that it was really 19th-century scientists creating the idea that, you know, queerness was bad.

#### HELEN

Mhm.

#### NEMO

There were other things as well. Buddhism was also a big influence in East Asia, about creating these sexual roles as well. So, oh, blah, fluidity and gender and sexuality. But when you do grow up in fairly traumatic places -- like, Alestes has the idea of also losing people that you suddenly now care about is a huge thing, I would say. And allowing yourselves to love them and forming attachments is very scary.

And I feel like that's also something that doesn't really get talked about because most family narratives in the cis kind of way, even though they might talk about families breaking down, you still have that, "Oh, well, they're your blood. You will always love them in a certain way." But it's -- so I feel like it's so much scarier, the concept of losing somebody that you really, really do care about but is not contractually obliged to always love you back. 

#### HELEN

Yeah. Yeah. I think that there is never any guarantee of a person loving you or for always, ever and ever. Um, but I think that queer people have to deal with that a lot earlier and with a lot more seriousness than cis people often do.

#### NEMO

Mhm.

#### HELEN

Like, the idea of having to go no-contact or low-contact with one's own family just because of something about who you are that you can't change -- I think it's a very painful one because a lot of the narratives that you see around mainstream family dramas, you have to have actually done something or your parent has to have actually done something to have driven you away. It's not about an inherent part of your being.

#### NEMO

Mm.

#### HELEN

I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say there, but I guess I've tried to say that there's a fragility, I think, often in terms of being queer in a family, and I think that's one of the reasons why queer found family is such a big thing. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. Yeah. 

#### HELEN

'Cause I would actually say the opposite of... I mean, you said "contractually obliged to love," but like, they're not. And to me it actually feels safer to depend on people who are not related to me, because it means that they *chose* to know me and they *chose* to enter into this relationship with me. And so there is something that feels stronger to me than not doing it out of duty.

#### NEMO

Mm, yeah. I always find it -- it's interesting and I feel like these things do heighten our attachment to the idea of the queer found family. I saw a Tumblr post recently by a user called quasi-normalcy, and it reads, "It probably goes without saying, but found family trope is so popular because so very many people are so terribly, terribly lonely."

And I, yeah, it made me *oof* quite hard. But the idea of having to find people who will make your life less lonely is unfortunately something that many, if not all, queer people of color can understand or empathize with.

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

And someone was talking about how in ballroom culture in the eighties in New York, so mostly Black queer people in eighties in New York creating houses for each other and becoming mothers, becoming fathers, becoming siblings of other queer people who didn't have a home anymore.

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

And so making those houses for each other. And those things can only exist when something as terrible as every one of these people have lost their family exists.

And so, yeah. I feel like the queer found family does speak to a lot of queer people because it's probably something that we've already started to do in some way with our friends. I did see -- I was on a walk with my friends the other day for a forest and we have a friend who's very -- like, he tries to be very serious, so he's very serious, only wears monochromatic colors, but we know that he's soft on the inside. And so we started saying that he has whimsy in his heart. And since then I've just started being like, "Oh, we love you and we love your whimsy." And it just makes me really soft and warm, I guess, thinking about those kind of moments in my life where I have these friends where I can be like, "Wow, I feel so much joy hanging around this with these people and I feel like I could rely on them for anything."

And we'll see the *Trice Forgotten* characters, they're not there yet. They're not actually giving each other whimsy, but they're certainly, uh, that's certainly hopefully where they're headed.

-- "Hopefully," I say, as if I'm not writing the show!

#### HELEN

Well, you never know. Characters often surprise me. 

#### NEMO

Yeah, that's true. 

#### HELEN

You have reminded me -- I can't remember her name unfortunately, but there was a lesbian woman during the AIDS crisis. So basically a lot of the time men were sort of forcibly outed to their families once they contracted AIDS, and that was how they got disowned and abandoned, and there was this one woman who buried them all, basically.

#### NEMO

Yeah. 

#### HELEN

And I think about her a lot.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And I think about -- there are just, there are lots and lots of stories about the lesbian community looking after gay men during that time and having to step up because nobody else would. Because nurses would refuse to touch them or because funeral homes would refuse to have them.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And I think as well about -- um, have you seen *It's a Sin?* 

#### NEMO

Yes, I have. 

#### HELEN

Yes. That also makes me think about queer found family as well, because that's literally what they --

#### NEMO

Do.

#### HELEN

Yeah. In that house --

#### NEMO

The, like, solidarity --

#### HELEN

Mhm.

#### NEMO

And the decision that we are going to care about each other.

#### HELEN

Yes.

#### NEMO

Especially because other people aren't. And that gets really frustrating when it's really hard to do.

#### HELEN

Yes.

#### NEMO

I'm thinking about *Trice Forgotten* now. I'm not thinking about AIDS crisis, that -- felt like I need to be clear about that. But yeah. That people are still people and can be very frustrating, but that we are going to decide to care about each other, which is what's so frustrating about -- rant coming -- about the LGB Alliance in the UK...

#### HELEN

Oh.

#### NEMO

Who are like, they call themselves a charity and they call themselves sticking up for lesbian and and gay rights, but are purely a fascist --

#### HELEN

Yeah. 

#### NEMO

Hate group. And the idea -- like, they really are just trying to tear people apart.

#### HELEN

Mhm.

#### NEMO

They did a study recently and they basically were trying to force trans people to start hate-messaging about lesbian women and loads of lesbian women were like, "No, you don't speak for us, LGB Alliance, go away."

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

It makes me so emotional when I do see cisgender lesbian women speaking up for transgender rights, and I shouldn't be. I shouldn't be emotional about the fact that there *is* intercommunity alliance and strength, but anytime I do see -- especially older white women, because unfortunately that is also the demographic of like --

#### HELEN

TERFs.

#### NEMO

Exactly. That. I'm like, "How have we got to the point where it's surprising to me when queer people stick up for each other?"

#### HELEN

Yeah. There's always been, like I say, there's always been intercommunity tensions.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

I think for me, one thing that's most frustrating about the LGB Alliance and all their various sock-puppets and followers, and that is that there's really not that many of them. They just are very loud and post a lot. There's way, way, way more of us than there are of them.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And, I mean, it -- maybe it's easy for me to say because I'm not, despite being sort of genderfluid/non-binary, I don't think of myself as trans --

#### NEMO

And I.

#### HELEN

I'm still that stage where I'm like, "Is that something that I can claim? Am I under this umbrella? Is this something that I can say?" But um, I'm not a person who is at the forefront of being threatened by all of this. 

#### NEMO

My small caveat here is the same thing I said in a previous episode, which is there is space for anyone who wants to call themself transgender. There is not a limited amount of places. So if you would like to come under the umbrella term, you can and you should. But you shouldn't -- like, you know, but you don't have to. But, yes. That is my caveat for anyone at any point who is like, "Oh, I don't know whether I'm taking off space." It's not a one-in-one-out system; you don't have to shoot someone in order to be allowed to use the name. It's --

#### HELEN

Not a physical space. 

#### NEMO

Yeah, exactly. And you know, you can always decide that you don't like the word and all of those kind of things. So yeah. 

#### HELEN

There's nothing wrong with the word. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. Yeah. It --

#### HELEN

Just, the experiences associated with it are not ones that I have, to me.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And so it doesn't feel like something I can claim.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

This is one of those things where it's like, I would be saying exactly the same thing to you if you were having these questions, but when it's me it's different. Yeah.

#### NEMO

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

#### HELEN

I can't remember what we were talking about before, but I think the upshot was "TERFs bad, and less relevant than they think they are." 

#### NEMO

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it wasn't in the last episode, but in the episode before that we've finally introduced Inez, who is every single episode that Raf and I do about Below Decks. We're always like, "Oh, we wanna talk about this character, but we can't." And then the first episode that Inez is here, Raf isn't in the episode. So I'm gonna talk about Inez, who is, in contemporary parlance -- parlance? Parlance. Whatever, French -- genderfluid.

#### HELEN

Mhm.

#### NEMO

Genderqueer, uses he/she/they/any pronouns, and one of their first lines when they arrive is, "Hey, we're all family here."

#### HELEN

Right.

#### NEMO

And Siva has no understanding of what that means.

#### HELEN

Yeah.

#### NEMO

Because Siva has never -- Siva doesn't comprehend, I guess, queerness. My little egg who hasn't really conceptualized his own queerness yet, I would say. Whereas Inez is coming in strong with the like, "If I had the word trans, I would be using it." And again, the crew of the *Netaoansom* respect Inez's gender identity while also hating Inez's personality.

#### HELEN

I really like Inez. I haven't listened to episode six, but I did hear episode five, and I love hearing someone be so self-confident in themselves.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

And I am very interested to see what their relationship with Siva -- like, what influence they might have. 

#### NEMO

Getting Inez's sticky little fingers all over Siva. Hell yeah. Exactly.

I think actually on an episode of *Enthusigasm* that I was on with you about anime, I was talking about one of my favorite anime is called *Barakamon.* And it's not an explicitly queer genre, but it's a genre where a self-hating young person gets exiled to the countryside 'cause they're a city-slicker and they meet a community of people -- community in the small town kind of way -- who care for each other and care for this new person. And City-Slicker is like, "Oh God, I've only lived in cities my entire life. Why is everyone being so nice to me?!" And as someone who's only grown up in London my entire life and who genuinely does get surprised anytime I go north of London and people are like, "Hi, how are you doing?" I'm like, "Who are you? Why are you being nice to me?"

I feel like that's also an influence in *Trice Forgotten* where I'm like, hmm. People who are nice to me for no reason other than "human beings started off as tribes who needed to be part of a community to survive." Discuss.

#### HELEN

Yeah. I actually have this pal who -- he often says to me, "You're very understanding." And in fact my boyfriend often says that as well. And I'm like, "I don't know how else to be." And it's ironic that the fact that someone is telling me that I'm very understanding is something that I don't understand because -- to me, being understanding is absolutely the default.

#### NEMO

Yeah.

#### HELEN

It is incredibly easy for me to put myself in someone else's shoes. And so it always baffles me when people don't do that.

#### NEMO

Yeah. There was -- someone said something the other day, and I can't remember the exact quote and I can't find it. It was something like, a study that was done where if you are questioning something, you can't be judgemental because there is something in your brain. If your brain is in learning mode and querying mode, it prevents you from being judgemental. And so the idea that you can always be -- I really wish that I had the quote because it really, for me, was a epitomized *Trice Forgotten,* which is the characters who question things. But in a, like, "I'm questioning the world around me because I want to learn more about the world around me."

-- "I'm curious, you can't be judgemental if you're being curious," I think was what it was.

#### HELEN

Ah.

#### NEMO

And if you are curious about the people around you and you are attempting to understand them -- and you don't have to understand someone to be empathetic, but all of those things. You are opening your mind to the fact that your mind is continually growing. Whereas if you are consistently in a state of stoic, static, judgemental, "what I know about the world is what the world is," then you are not, you are not being curious. You're not growing in a certain way.

And I just thought, "Oh, I really like that because you can see it in *Trice Forgotten.* The characters who have stopped being curious and the characters who are."

#### HELEN

Yeah. And that does make a lot of sense 'cause if you think you've got everything sorted out, why would you ask any questions? Yeah, for sure. Yes. I guess I am always very aware that I do not know everything. 

#### NEMO

Yeah. I mean it's that thing of education as well, right? The higher you go in education -- and I'm always feeling this -- that idea that the more you know, the more you know you don't know. And the more you realize that, oh God, there's so many people out there with so many other interesting ideas!

And yeah, it's always that "big fish, small pond" conundrum.

#### HELEN

That's actually, that's so -- that's a wonderful thing.

#### NEMO

Yeah. Really lovely. 

#### HELEN

There's always something else.

#### NEMO

Yeah. And this world is so full of possibilities and potential, guys, even though we've talked about the TERFs and we've talked about all of the bad queer things that have been happening and we've lamented the youth having a world that we didn't grow up in. Um, it is really great, queer found families who are really excited about talking about snails that they found in a rock pool because they feel safe with each other and they're not gonna mock each other for feeling enthusiastic and excited and happy.

Unless you have anything else you would like to say on that point, I feel like that's a fairly nice place to end this episode. 

#### HELEN

I will say that you reminded me of a quote that I recently retweeted. Well, not a quote, it was just a tweet. Um, it was a -- "girl, not to be rude, but the world is so abundant, no shade, but despite the suffering, life is a tremendous gift." And that's something that I feel very much.

#### NEMO

That is an amazing place to leave this episode. So, Helen, if people wanted to find you for more thoughts about your beautiful mind -- oh, and I forgot to say also the best Rusty Quiller -- where can they, where can they find you? 

#### HELEN

People can find me on Twitter at @alecto101. That is _(spells out)_ A-L-E-C-T-O-one-zero-one, though mostly all I do though is retweet. So if you actually wanna hear from me you should go to my Twitch, which is twitch.tv/HelenRosamund, where I'm currently doing *Bear and Breakfast.* But hopefully we'll get back to *Mass Effect* soon.

#### NEMO

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. So that's it from me, Nemo, and goodbye from Helen. 

#### HELEN

Bye! 

#### NEMO

And we'll see you next time Below Deck!

##### [Show Theme -- Outro]

*Trice Forgotten* is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International License. The series is created by Nemo Martin and directed by Rafaella Marcus.

Today's episode featured Nemo Martin and Helen Gould, and was edited by Lowri Ann Davies and Catherine Rinella. *Trice Forgotten* is produced by Ian Geers, Lowri Ann Davies, and production manager Natasha Johnston, with executive producers Alexander J Newall and April Sumner.

To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit rustyquill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us @therustyquill, visit us on Facebook or email us at mail@rustyquill.com. Thanks for listening.