#ellie lovinger

[gaybookstournament]

Round 2, Bracket 4

Propaganda under the cut, feel free to add more in comments or reblogs

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Evelyn Hugo is a famous Hollywood star, after retiring from the spotlight after 3 decades, she became a recluse in her old age and made few and far appearances, leaving 7 husbands in her wake. The two things these marriages have in common is that they end in tragedy and Evelyn is the only one currently alive. Young up and coming writer Monique is requested by Evelyn personally to write her biography. Monique spends days with Evelyn getting her story of stardom and tragic love, finding out some interesting information that has never seen the light of day, until now.

The Monster of Her Age – Ellie is the granddaughter of critically acclaimed horror actor Lottie Lovinger, with whom she stared in a single movie with that left Ellie severely traumatised and timid around her grandmother. Ellie is now 17 and her grandmother has just passed away and the family reunites in Lottie’s Hobart home to pay their final respects and lay her to rest, when Ellie meets a cinephile her age, Riya, who invites her to join a feminist horror film club, Ellie faces her fears and unlocks long forgotten memories. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state of Tasmania, the small island that sits just below Australia on the map, and gets mocked by mainland Aussies.

[pridepages]

Broken Art: The Monster of Her Age

I just finished The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks. I have some thoughts...

Here there be spoilers!

Art is necessary for life. Any queer person can tell you about how art can be an escape hatch from the confines of our individual realities. In art we find safety, community, and hope. So much of loving ourselves comes from the comfort of the art we consume that helps us feel most in touch with ourselves and our deepest truths. What happens, then, when what we thought was a cordial becomes a poison? What happens when we learn the art we found solace in was made at the cost of someone else?

This is an issue that’s been debated a lot lately, particularly in light of She Who Must Not Be Named. 2 deep emotional--and irrational--impulses are jangled. On the one hand, we have the deep love of the art that was cultivated over years of consumption without seeing behind the curtain. On the other hand, we have a passionate desire to be better people: better allies, and more informed minds that bring a net positive to the world. With two conflicting voices shouting in our head...what to do?

I don’t presume to have The Right Answer. But I found some help reconciling through reading Danielle Binks’ novel The Monster Of Her Age.

Monster is narrated by Ellie Marsden, who is a former child actor from a (fictional) Australian film dynasty. Ellie was once delighted to follow in the footsteps of her beloved Bubbe, Scream Queen Lottie Lovinger, but became a victim of unethical practices on set: psychological torture to get the desired “reaction” of her character before the camera. Shut down and silenced--even at the behest of Lottie herself--a betrayed Ellie flees the family legacy and refuses to speak to her grandmother again until she is summoned home by the news that Lottie has suffered a stroke. Ellie and family return to their old hometown to await Lottie’s passing in hospice. During this time, Ellie meets Riya--horror fangirl and co-founder of the Fright Night for Final Girls movie club. Riya begs Ellie to come to the club and to possibly host a special screening of the movie that ruined Ellie’s life. As she finds herself beginning to fall for Riya, Ellie must then decide how honest she is prepared to be, and if she can find a way to put to rest the monsters of her past.

I could discuss this novel from the perspective of Ellie, but there are many other examples of Hollywood mistreating ‘stars’ and sacrificing people on the altar of celebrity. Instead, I’d like to take the less common approach of analyzing this story from Riya’s point of view. 

Riya is a horror fan for a particular reason: “because the whole world can be one big scary place and especially for women...But there’s something freeing about choosing to walk into a dark cinema and be scared. To take control and let yourself be frightened, to give yourself over to it...That’s powerful.” For Riya, art is a means of coping with the world by finding some small way--even a way just for herself--to take back power. Art by way of horror story makes her feel her most actualized, her most powerful self. 

Before meeting Ellie, Riya had no reason to believe there was anything unusual about the film Blood and Jacaranda. It was just another in a series of fascinating, seminal monster movies made both to be gobbled up like candy and savored for its subtext. Riya cannot know that Ellie sits across from her, fearing:  “I don’t know what I’ll do if she...shows me that she’s more interested in the idea of me than the person sitting right in front of her.” Because for all of Ellie’s life, conversations about her trauma were a “merry-go-round argument...Lottie...was sorry, immediately followed by all the reasons she didn’t really have to be--all the ways she wasn’t really at fault and I was overreacting or misremembering or didn’t understand this side of the business or or or.” Because this is what unethical ‘artists’ do: they justify mistreatment of others for the sake of their creation. The ends justify the means. It doesn’t matter, in the end, that someone out there has to live with the pain this ‘auteur’ inflicted. As long as someone else pays the price...who cares? It doesn’t matter to them that their actions have forced people like Ellie to live inescapably defined by a buried trauma, to have it repeated over and over: “It felt like nobody wanted to hear all the ways that move wrecked me, and how much I hated it. It was like they all wanted me to play a part and stop complaining, to keep acting even after the cameras stopped rolling.”

After hearing Ellie’s story that the performance of Blood and Jacaranda wasn’t just acting, but rather the recording of real psychological torture of a child, Riya has to come to terms with entirely recasting a beloved film, one of her comfort sources, in her mind. 

So how do we handle the realization that something or someone we loved has betrayed us fundamentally? Well, we should all be able to agree: “It was good...but that’s still not worth the sacrifice, and people who claim that it’s important and revelatory, who say they know its deeper meaning, will see that. And if they don’t, then they never really understood it in the first place.” Nothing is worth hurting others. Even Great Art should never come to exist if it is at the expense of someone’s life. But the world isn’t a perfect place. “people will see that they can still love something even if it means knowing an uglier truth behind its creation.” We can’t just...unlove something overnight. Especially not something that has wound its way deeply into our psyche. So how do we reconcile two conflicting but true feelings? I think what helps is to remember this: “the thing that people most cling to isn’t the product of art, but the message it instills.” The art itself isn’t the hill our irrational heart is dying on. The issue is that, even if it was created unethically, that art struck some kind of note in us. We didn’t know that it was tainted, and so we let it into our hearts and we felt something deeply positive. We felt uplifted, or seen, or connected. And being asked to sacrifice that feeling--even the perpetual source of that feeling--can seem like too much for our fragile, irrational brains to handle.

Bottom line: our brains don’t like gray areas. They want things to be black and white: this thing made me feel a positive way, so I want it to be good. This thing or its creator brought evil on the world, so I want it to be bad. I want it to be good. But does that make me bad? I don’t want to be bad. What do I do?

Here’s what we do: we live in the gray areas. Our feelings are not who we are. Who we are is in our choices. How we act in the world. We choose the actions that bring net positive or negative. And in our conflicted hearts, we learn to say this to the broken art that betrayed us: “I’m still hurt by you, and mad at you--but I can forgive you. Because you are more than just your worse moments...and we had so many good ones too.”

We can forgive our past love forged in ignorance. We can forgive our present weak and foolish hearts that can’t forget. We can learn to live with two conflicting truths. And then we can move forward with the pledge to do the best we can for real people impacted today, tomorrow, and from now on.

[derpcakes]

Queer YA Spotlight: The Monster of Her Age

‘I think—aside from the adrenaline rush and vicarious feeling of surviving something just like the characters after you’ve watched a scary movie—I think I love horror so much because the whole world can be one big scary place, and especially for women, right?’ Riya carelessly flicks her plait, and brushes stray curls away from her face—something I’m beginning to notice she does when she’s excited. ‘But there’s something freeing about choosing to walk into a dark cinema and be scared. To take control and let yourself be frightened, to give yourself over to it. Because we don’t get a lot of say in what happens to us in the real world and the times we’re scared when we don’t want to be. Because there’s some creep on a train brushing up against you, or some perv at a party who thinks you being wasted is a free pass…’

In my head I think, Or some adults who think fear is entertainment, that your vulnerability is their authentic vision brought to life.

Riya continues, ‘But choosing fear? In a controlled environment, where the stories can push us to think about what we’d do in that situation—especially when most of the time the hero in a horror film is a woman—that’s amazing! That’s powerful.’

Premise: Ellie Marsden’s grandmother is the (in)famous Lottie Lovinger, who made her screen debut as a cricket-bat-wielding, mini-shorts-wearing Final Girl in a ‘70s slasher movie and has been an undisputed scream queen ever since. Once, Ellie wanted to follow in her footsteps, but her one experience as a child actor left her traumatised—and estranged from Lottie, who let the on-set abuse happen. But when Lottie has a stroke, Ellie must return home and reckon with her complicated relationship with the Lovinger family legacy. Was Lottie a heroine, or a monster? Can a person be both at once?

Keep reading...

[alphareader]

How do you ruin someone's childhood?

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it's too late.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and at last comes to understand her family's legacy.

[auslgbtqya]

The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks

(2021)

From the Publisher:

In a neo-Gothic mansion in a city at the end of the world, Ellie finds there's room enough for art, family, forgiveness and love. A coming-of-age story about embracing the things that scare us from the author of The Year the Maps Changed.

WINNER - INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2022, YOUNG ADULT CATEGORY

How do you ruin someone's childhood?

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it's too late.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and at last comes to understand her family's legacy.

A story of love, loss, family and film - a stirring, insightful novel about letting go of anger and learning to forgive without forgetting. And about embracing the things that scare us, in order to be braver.

Goodreads

[six-bloodyminutes]

I am addicted to tiktok and my entire fyp is le cruset pots so I am offering for your consideration...Thirsty Hoes as Le Cruset pots (this is my first time doing a post like this so pls be nice)

@brianmays-hair

Okay so Jess is most definitely Artichaut because any time I think of Jess I think of Far From The Maddening Crowd and Pride and Prejudice and basically any period piece set in the UK and this color just seems so reminiscent of that. Jess is also just so classy and sophisticated to me and this color is definitely that as well :)

@joemazzmatazz

Regan is Indigo 100%. The color is so deep and funky and reminds me of Regan’s personality. Regan is just so effortlessly cool and this color just screams cool to me idk. It’s also a very bold and strong color and she just comes across as so strong and sure of herself and that’s something I definitely admire!

@im-an-adult-ish

Meredith is Fig because she’s just got this fun-lovingness to her that I think this color captures perfectly. She’s just warm and fun and I love her and I think this specific shade of purple is also very warm and fun and the gold knob adds a lil something just like Meredith does to the chat!

@deacyblues

Pearl is Stone w/ a gold knob bc I mean look at it!!! Again, just effortlessly cool and also edgy and (at least I think) this is very much Pearl’s vibe. Again the gold knob really just adds something extra idk really how to describe is but I just really think this pot screams Pearl

@samxslaughter

Sam is def Sea Salt which by the way is my favorite out of all the colors. Calm, cool, and collected are all was that I would describe Sam and that’s exactly how this color makes me feel

@almightygwil

Ellie! Is! A! Ray! Of! Sunshine! So OF COURSE I gave her this bright ass Nectar color. Ellie just always makes me smile and reminds me of the color yellow. Her kindness and warmth are infectious and I love her very much!!

@archaicmusings

Cal gives me big cottagecore vibes I really don’t know how to explain it and Meringue is the epitome of cottagecore. This is not to say that Cal is boring bc she most definitely isn’t and I so enjoy what she adds to the conversation (esp. when it’s about Taylor Swift)

@hijackmy-heart

Nat gives me big orange/Flame vibes but maybe it’s bc she has the comet emoji next to her name in the discord idk. I love Nat so much honestly and her reaction images are top tier!!! She is also definitely one of the main people in the chat that feed my chaotic energy and for that I am eternally greatful hehehe

@kiwi-hardy

Leah is so chaotic and I love it so ofc I had to give her Cerise, the most chaotic Le Crueset color imo. She doesn’t come in the chat often but when she does it’s dynamite and always makes me laugh!

@ineloqueent

So I haven’t known Tina for super long but she is so nice and also seems kinda chaotic which I’m suuuuper here for :)) This color just really seems to fit her to me and I’m so glad she’s a Hoe now!!

[error04notfou]

Queer Representation- Why Can’t 2 Men Just Be Friends

All-fucking-right, folks. Let’s sit the fuck down and listen real close for a moment. Don’t worry! I won’t take up tooooo much of your time. I know how busy it is being accidentally an asshole. I’ve been there. I’m gonna be nice, I promise. I just swear a lot.

There are same sex friendships on TV that are healthy and loving. There are a wide variety of relationships that slide themselves along a range of healthfulness and lovingness involving people of similar or same sexes having friendships. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because there would be no writers making stories that queers become interested in that do not wish to create queer representation.

See the wikipedia page for the following categories: Bromance, Womance, Platonic Love, Bromantic Comedy, Buddy Cop. Google Guy Love. You’ll love it.

Merlin. Sherlock. Supernatural. Star Trek. Scrubs. Boy Meets World. Literally Every Children’s Show Featuring Sentient Creatures.

We wouldn’t have stories written that continuously hint at queer stories without providing actual representation. I’m sure none of you want to hear the term queer baiting right now but I promise ye, us queers don’t want to see it either. Fucken. SHIT, my dudes. Unless you are looking for queer representation- unless you have that reflexive search for queerness in life and in media- queer baiting is something you can miss or misinterpret as friendliness. It has to do with framing, lighting, the scoring, the word choice. There’s a lot of flags a writer can throw up that Hint at possible queerness without being explicit enough to sound any alarms for people not keyed to look for queer representation in media. 

Hannibal is Not A Good Example because their goal was to redefine intimacy and it is Gay AS FUCK.

Teen Wolf. Sherlock. Supernatural. 

Go to youtube. Type in queerbaiting. There’s lots of videos with info on it. Rowen Ellis has some shit. Sarah Z, The Fucking QueerTUBE CHANNEL EQUIVALENT OF DOES THE DOG DIE, Aretheygay, HAS A VIDEO ON IT. Somewhere in Hbomberguy’s FEATURELENGTH FILM on why Sherlock is garbage, he touches on queerbaiting. 

Because they got to eat their cake and have it too, shows, movies, and books keep doing the fucken thing. Continuously throwing out flags of possible queerness for main characters while simultaneously being offended at queer audiences for believing them and then asking where the queer representation was. As well, they get to have continuously running jokes about how haha it’s funny that these two men show affection for each other because that’s gay and they’re not they’re just guys being dudes! (Scrubs. Look. You do a great job, I’m not coming for you but I am coming for Every Film of Michael Bay’s featuring two men who are friends. Pain and Gain? Anyone?)

See Teen Wolf banning the signing of ship fan art. Literally any scene in Sherlock where John Watson no homos so hard he accidentally wraps back around to yes homo.

Here’s the skinny, my dudes. My most righteously dudely dudes. The reason why queers ask for queer representation in media is because they Actually Don’t Have Much representation. It is exceedingly rare to find queer representation. And to find queer representation that doesn’t have a tragic end? Even more difficult. Despite the rustled jimmies of people finding a singular queer in their straight salad and exclaiming about the infestation of queers in this restaurant (the health department aught to be called! Think Of The Children!) it IS rare- unlike same sex friendships in films. 

This is a capitalistic system. I know right? When is that going to stop being pointed out? Supply and demand is the basic tenant- or so I was taught in high school economics. I, as a fellow queer, will simply feel grateful that I live in a time where we can be considered a consumer base with a loud enough voice to be seen as providing pressure on an industry that has yet to supply for our demand. Especially since it is difficult for me to forget that it was not so long ago that our voices were considered an inconvenience for demanding the right to be able to live.  

What you’ve done above is simplify an incredibly complex issue into its most reductive and unhelpful parts. No one can argue that it’s good for people to be able to have friendships on TV or anywhere else. The problem comes in in that this argument ignores the part where Everyone is Arguing That It’s Not OK To Have QUEER Relationships On TV and that These Relationships are Unhealthy. That is the tacit argument here. That’s the dog-whistle you’re accidentally blowing when you say that. 

It’s similar to people who say things like: What about the children? How am I going to explain THIS to them? I’m OK with gays but do they have to shove it in my face like this? Gay marriage is alright by me but I don’t want to see them kiss! Why can’t two men just be good friends! They’re just gals being pals. Queers make up less than 4 percent of the population, why do they have to be in everything I watch? I’m not homophobic, I just don’t want to be inconvenienced. I’m all for queer representation but does it have to be in the shows I like? Why can’t they (the queers) be happy with the representation they do have? Like Brokeback (dead gay) and The Imitation Game (Historical dead gay) or Jack from Will and Grace (Gay Stereotype), or like a shit ton of Alfred Hitchcock’s villains (The Evil Queers (Dibs on that as a band name BTW))? Or the Sassy Gay Accessory Friend like in Riverdale, GBF, that weird alien dude from American Dad? 

These are dog whistles. They are silencing tactics. They are manipulation. They are used to implicitly say that queerness is not OK. 

So no. No one is going to say it’s bad to see two dudes being friends and expressing that closeness in any media. I can understand the feeling like your views and relationships are under attack. I can understand why people feel afraid to express affection. I feel afraid, too. The difference is when straight people say they’re afraid of seeming gay, what they’re saying is they’re afraid they might be mistaken for me. As if that’s somehow embarrassing or dangerous or immoral. 

The part you’re missing when you talk about how frustrating it is that queers see queerness in relationships depicted on TV that you like is that you’re afraid they might be just like you. And a part of your brain associates queerness only with sexual acts. That’s why we’re inappropriate. YOU’RE not queer so you don’t like queer sex! Why would you want to see queer sex on TV? You don’t want to see queer kissing! Queer hand holding! You’re not queer! 

That’s why it’s difficult for people to consider explaining it to their kids. That’s why it’s difficult to Accept that there are queer children. That’s why I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is PG 13 despite its r*pe jokes, half naked women, and continuous references to sex, but had they included a same sex kiss as they had initially intended it, the MPAA would have made it rated R (Literally just google it. trufax.) Because these are all facets of homophobia. It’s ingrained and sometimes unconscious. You don’t have to actively hate queers to accidentally help those who do silencing them. 

So yeah. Long fucking story short. It would be cool for queers not to have to grasp at any same sex relationship on TV for hints of themselves. I agree. I’m getting fucking tired as all hell having to Read Between The Straight Lines to see the gay subtext. I’d like some straight up gay text. We’ll stop having to come for your platonic friendships when Hollywood finally gets around to inventing actual queer people in its media. And no fucking blink and you’ll miss it Le Fou doesn’t count. Neither does well-they-said-in-a-tweet Dumbledoor. 

[gaybookstournament]

Round 1, bracket 10

Propaganda under the cut, feel free to add more in comments or reblogs

Henry Hamlet’s Heart – Henry Hamlet is the School captain at an all-boys school in 2008. After he and his friends play a game of things that want to do before graduating and going their separate ways. Henry reads the crumpled up piece of paper that his best friend since forever, Len, wrote, which all but proclaims his love to Henry. Henry then has to juggle his newly discovered feelings for Len, while dealing with Australian highschool. This book takes place in the capital of the Australian state Queensland, Brisbane. Whereas most Australian books take place in Melbourne or Sydney.

The Monster of Her Age – Ellie is the granddaughter of critically acclaimed horror actor Lottie Lovinger, with whom she stared in a single movie with that left Ellie severely traumatised and timid around her grandmother. Ellie is now 17 and her grandmother has just passed away and the family reunites in Lottie’s Hobart home to pay their final respects and lay her to rest, when Ellie meets a cinephile her age, Riya, who invites her to join a feminist horror film club, Ellie faces her fears and unlocks long forgotten memories. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state of Tasmania, the small island that sits just below Australia on the map, and gets mocked by mainland Aussies.

[alphareader]

‘The Monster of Her Age’ by Danielle Binks - coming August 2021

In a neo-Gothic mansion in a city at the end of the world, Ellie finds there's room enough for art, family, forgiveness and love. A coming-of-age story about embracing the things that scare us from the author of ‘The Year the Maps Changed.’

How do you ruin someone's childhood? You let them make-believe that they are a monster. But sooner or later, the mask must come off...

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it's too late. But forgiveness feels like playing make-believe, and memories are like ghosts.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and last comes to understand her family's legacy - and her own part in it.

A story of love, loss, family and film - a stirring, insightful novel about letting go of anger and learning to forgive without forgetting. And about embracing the things that scare us, in order to be braver.

[alphareader]

In a neo-Gothic mansion in a city at the end of the world, Ellie finds there's room enough for art, family, forgiveness and love. A coming-of-age story about embracing the things that scare us from the author of ‘The Year the Maps Changed.’

How do you ruin someone's childhood? You let them make-believe that they are a monster. But sooner or later, the mask must come off...

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it's too late. But forgiveness feels like playing make-believe, and memories are like ghosts.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and last comes to understand her family's legacy - and her own part in it.

A story of love, loss, family and film - a stirring, insightful novel about letting go of anger and learning to forgive without forgetting. And about embracing the things that scare us, in order to be braver.