By the time 2017 rolled around, I had spent years absorbing queer and women-centered reality television. Shows like The A-List: New York, The A-List: Dallas, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Chasing: Atlanta, Rica Famosa Latina, Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, Married to Medicine, and Basketball Wives weren’t just entertainment. They were windows into communities—messy ones, loving ones, complicated ones—and reflections of identity in motion.
And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, I found myself wondering:
“What would my community look like in this format?”
Not the idealized version. Not the sanitized one.
The real one—the one I knew, grew up around, and felt connected to.
That’s where the spark for Flaming Bros San Fernando began.
Why San Fernando Lives in My Memory
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, but the City of San Fernando always felt like a world-within-a-world. As someone with West African, Native American, and Irish heritage, I noticed early on how deeply Latino and culturally rooted the City was—something as small as a school name like Cesar Chavez Learning Academy said so much.
San Fernando felt different from the Valley that raised me.
It felt warmer.
More intentional.
More grounded in family, food, history, and community.
I don’t know if everyone who lives there feels that way, but from my perspective—this mix of local and outsider—it held a certain intimacy that never faded. A small place with a big sense of self.
And honestly, the size never bothered me.
If anything, it inspired me.
Because storytelling isn’t about square footage.
It’s about the people who fill the space.
Choosing a Name That Meant Something
“Flaming Bros.”
I came up with that title in 2015, long before the characters existed. At the time, the word “flaming” carried its weight—derogatory, stereotypical, overused to put gay men into boxes. As a Black queer person, I understood what it meant to reclaim something, even while feeling conflicted about reclamation in general.
But for this project, “flaming” wasn’t about stereotype.
It was about truth.
A truth that sometimes our loudness, softness, boldness, messiness, and brilliance get labeled as “too much.”
A truth that we often learn to laugh at, subvert, or flip on its head.
A truth that becomes community when shared.
Pairing that with “San Fernando” grounded it.
It turned a slur into a statement.
It turned mockery into identity.
It turned a joke between friends into the name of a world built from care.
Why FBSF Became the One That Stayed
Out of all the Flaming Bros concepts I created since 2015, San Fernando is the one that kept pulling me back. Not because the drama was bigger—though trust, the drama was there—but because the emotional stakes felt real.
The structure borrows from shows like Rica Famosa Latina and Basketball Wives, where relationships crack and heal on camera, where dysfunction isn’t just spectacle but history, habit, and heartache. It captures the push and pull of wanting to grow but not knowing how.
Some characters fall into problematic tropes—David Ty Reza being a clear example—but that complexity mirrors something true: we don’t always get to choose the versions of ourselves we outgrow. Sometimes it happens slowly. Sometimes it happens on the biggest stage possible.
And yes, I could see this show on VH1.
But more importantly, I can see the humanity in it.
Because Flaming Bros San Fernando isn’t just a parody of reality TV culture.
It’s a reflection of the communities I’ve lived in, loved, struggled with, and learned from.
It’s a collage of memories—messy, vibrant, loud, painful, funny—and a reminder that small places can hold big stories.
FBSF is my love letter to the San Fernando Valley, to queer spaces, to second chances, and to the complicated beauty of being part of a community that’s imperfect but still worth showing up for.
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