Not really. I’ve always been interested in what happens when you give the narrative voice to the sidekick. In a way, WGWG is a novel in which two sidekicks are given narrative voices. (You don’t have to read it that way, of course, but I think you could certainly make the case that Tiny Cooper is the protagonist of the novel.)

I wanted Tiny to be entirely agnostic toward the stereotypes. I liked the idea that he really, deep down didn’t care if it happened to be “gay” to like musical theater. He just likes musical theater.

After all, he also doesn’t care that it’s “straight” to play football, and he’s the best player on his school’s football team. He just likes football.

That noted, it was also important for us to have characters like Gary, Nick, and will grayson in the novel to present multiple portraits of gay teens.

I named him Tiny, and I have no idea what his first name is. Much to the frustration of many readers, I really feel unqualified to speak to anything that is intentionally left ambiguous in the text of the novel. I believe that books belong to their readers, and that extra-textual opinions of authors should not be privileged over other voices.