"I'm Not Afraid": A gay subtext romance between Miguel and the boy his parents have kidnapped. With cocks, the Nahuatl language, and a shirtless Short Guy.

 

In 2003 I saw Non ho pauro ("I'm Not Scared"), the film version of the novel by Niccolò Ammaniti: Nine-year old Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) befriends a kidnapped boy, and discovers that everyone in his village is responsible.  

Left: Recent photo of Giuseppe.  He may not be the Non ho pauro one.

So I wasn't planning to watch the 2026 Spanish version, No tengo miedo, on Netflix.  How could they expand it into a tv series without a lot of padding?  Besides, I already know the twist ending.  So do you.

Then Yago Sandoval (who plays the kidnapped boy) posts that he and Aldo Navarro (the Michele character) have "Amistad como portal amoroso."  Portal amoroso is used to convey the transcendence, stability, and peace that comes from romantic love.  Is he referring to their own relationshp, or the characters?  There was no significant gay subtext in the 2003 movie, but just in case there is here, let's check out Episode 1.1, "Brujas" (Witches).  

Scene 1: Miguel lies amid dead leaves on the ground.  He has wet his pants.  He asks "Am I dead?"

No, his friends are calling for him.  As he walks through the ruins of an old convent, he stumbles upon a deep pit, and at the bottom a boy, chained up. 

Cut to four kids playing soccer, pretending that they're Mexico vs. Denmark in the 1986 World Cup.  A Bully hits Miguel in the crotch with the ball, then kicks it out into the jungle.  He orders  the Nerd Chuy to retrieve it, "Or I'll kill you."  

Left: The Bully is played by Mauro Guzman, who is quick to point out that he and Bruno Strauss (Chuy) are actually friends.

The Teenage Felix arrives and tells them not to go into the jungle, because a witch lives there who eats children.  Then he grabs his brother, the Bully, and drives him home.

The others ride their bicycles home, discussing why the Bully is so mean and if there really is a kid-eating witch.

Scene 2: Teenage Felix (Cosmo Elio Gonzalez) and the Bully arrive at their run-down, trash-strewn house to see Dad keeled over due to drunkenness and the debilitating disease that they can't afford medication for.  They discuss how horrible their lives are.  Dad would like to shoot himself, but he can't afford a gun, darn.  

As the Bully goes off to fetch some rotten platanos for dinner, Dad asks, "Why don't we have a mansion yet?  You said you have a deal going on that would make us the wealthiest family in the world?"

"I'm working on it!" Felix exclaims.  He must be the kidnapper!

Scene 3:  The kids arrive at Nerd Chuy's house to see his parents arguing with Pino (Luis Alberti, right).  "You can't back out now!" "But I'm scared." "Have faith!"  They're in on the kidnapping, too.

Nerd Chuy stays behind to have dinner, and the two remaining kids, Miguel and his Sister, go home with Pino, their Dad.  I thought he was a single father, but his wife is there, being depressed.  They do Sister's medical treatments, which she hates, and have rice and beans for dinner for the 3,000th time.   Dad Pino promises that soon they'll be able to afford real food, and 20 tv sets so they can watch the game from anywhere in their mansion. 

The kids retreat to their bedroom, where Sister calls him Luis.  Richster Chava appears at the window to invite Miguel/Luis to watch the game in his mansion.

"But you can't go in there without permission!" Sister exclaims.

"Richster Chava can, and his parents are asleep, so they won't know I'm there."  Can't he invite a friend over?  Or are the bourgeoisie not supposed to associate with the proletariat?

Cut to Richster Chava and Miguel/Luis watching the game and being affectionate.  I'd call it a gay-subtext buddy-bond.

Scene 4: In the morning Miguel/Luis is awakened to the poor people arguing with a rich guy.  "Something must have happened!" "We had nothing to with it!" The Nerd  Chuy and his parents have vanished, and his house has been ransacked!  

Richster Chava, Miguel/Luis, and his Sister decide to investigate.  At the house, they find that Nerd Chuy's bicycle is gone.  If he was kidnapped, it would still be there. They conclude that he went to the witch's house to fetch the soccer ball, and got eaten. Then his parents went looking for him, and the witch got them, too.

They run to the jungle to investigate.  Shouldn't you take your bikes?  It was miles away yesterday. 

More after the break

Evan Ovenell: The gay-subtext guy of "Heartstopper" and "Harry Potter," MMA fighter, barrister. With some dicks and Hagrid's butt.

The Heartstopper Forever podcast interviews each of LGBT couples of the series.

Charlie and Nick (Joe Locke and Kit Connor)

Darcy and Tara (Corinna Brown, Kizzie Edgell)

Elle and Tao (Yasmin Finney, William Gao, left).  (Elle is a trans girl)

But what about Christian and Sai (Evan Ovenell, Ashwin Vishwanath)?

They are members of Nick's rugby team and inseparable companions.  Christian takes awhile to realize that Nick and Charlie are boyfriends, not "good mates," which Sai finds annoying.  They stand by during the homophobic bullying incident, but later apologize.

I see the way you're gazing at him, buddy.

Just kiss him.  You know you want to.

I get it, with a gay power couple and two LGBT side couples, there's no room in the scripts for a fourth, so their romance has to stay subtext.  But it's enough to suggest a profile.

There isn't much about Ashwin available.  The IMDB says that he has another acting credit besides Heartstopper, playing Chef Rao in We Are Vegans (2016), but that's probably another Ashwin Vishwanath.  There are several out there, including a theoretical physicist and a Bollywood actor.

And whoever belongs to this cock.

But Evan has a resume and an Instagram account.  In addition to Heartstopper, he has done voice work in the full-cast audiobooks of the Harry Potter series (2025-26), 

 Not the movie cast, of course.  Harry is voiced by Frankie Treadaway and Jaxon Knopf (left, on his way to prom in a car full of boys. 'Nuff said).

Dumbledore (Headmaster of Hogwarts) by Hugh Laurie

Mean teacher Severus Snape, who was in love with Harry's mum, by Riz Ahmed

And Hagrid, the Half-Giant who becomes Harry's pal, by Mark Addy (far left , showing his stuff in The Full Monty).

More after the break

Jonathan Taylor Thomas: The teen idol superstar plays gay characters, retires from acting before he can show us his dick. Probably.

 

During the early 1990s, ABC offered a "family-friendly" lineup on Wednesday nights, beginning with The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage courting the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.  We sang a parody of the theme song, the Beatle's "With a Little Help from My Friends":

What would you do if I shat on your shoes?
Would you get up and kick me to the moon?

Before turning the channel to CBS, with The Nanny and Melrose Place.

But we knew about each of the shows, because you knew about every show in the era. They included:

Doogie Houser, with Neil Patrick Harris (right, recent photo) as a 13 year old doctor named Doogie.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a coach.

And Home Improvement, with Tim Allen as a grunting, sweating macho man who hosts a tool-themed tv series and tries to instill grunting, sweating masculinity into his three sons.  Zachery Ty Bryant (playing Brad), the eldest and most muscular, was promoted as a teen idol to draw in teenage girls (they weren't aware of gay boys).  But oddly, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas (playing Randy) who took off, causing millions of teenage and preteen girls to tune it (again, no gay boys exist).  It quickly jumped to #2 in the ratings.

Wait -- Brad is a jock, a football star, a letterman who every girl in the school swoons over.  Randy is soft, bookish, somewhat femme, playing "a fairy" in the school play, an aspiring actor and journalist.  How did Jonathan Taylor Thomas do it?

The showrunners were stumped. They should have realized that straight girls and gay boys just starting to recognize their romantic interests prefer soft, cuddly, and relatable: Malcolm, not Reese (Malcolm in the Middle), Chris, not Drew (Everybody Hates Chris); Adam, not Barry (The Goldbergs). 

In the mid-1990s, Home Improvement moved to Tuesdays, in the hope that its popularity would help stragglers like Spin City.  We still steered clear of the grunting, sweating Tim Allen, quickly changing the channel to Frasier (CBS) and then back for Drew Carey (ABC).    

But we could hardly ignore JTT; he was on every magazine cover, in every talk show.

He presented at the Emmies and the Golden Globes.

We saw him waving in Thanksgiving and Christmas parades

He appeared in specials honoring Tom Cruise and Lauren Hutton

He praised James Bond in a documentary about the super-spy.

Elton John hugged him.

He played Tom Sawyer opposite Devon Sawa's Huckleberry Finn in Tom and Huck (1995), with a story only vaguely related to the original novels.

An adventure boy opposite Devon Sawa and Scott Bairstow (left) in Wild America (1997).

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

The Mystery of Xale/Egor Spider: From New York or Texas? Or Russia? Fitness model or car salesman? Big or small cock? Is he Spider-Man?

 

It was an Instagram page consisting of 30 or so photos of this guy flexing, all posted in July 2026.

Sometimes wearing glasses and a cowboy hat.  His name was Xale Spider.

He's also got a Spider Xale  Instagram, with photos of Spider-man, real spiders, his sister, who is wearing a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt, and his Dad, who seems to own a carpet store.  

I found SpiderXale on X, with 24,000 followers but no content except for a few "sensitive content" photos, and "New York."  Wait -- what about Wisconsin?

He seems to be a redhead now.

It linked to a site called Fansly, which seems to be like OnlyFans.  You pay $9 per month for "Hot Content."  Except there are no examples, and now his name is Egor Xale.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.