#feeling a lot of queer grief right now and this poem is part of how im processing it tbh

[keplercryptids]

image description expanded upon from alt text:

A poem by Kai Cheng Thom, as it appears in Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry, that reads:

ON THE ORIGIN OF TRANS FEMMES

for Meredith Russo

we are the daughters of witches that they could and did burn we are the daughters of witches that they are still burning & you know in my dreams, a woman keeps whispering: keep going maybe in the next lifetime we’ll make it to the water

[bengiyo]

Love for Love's Sake Ep 8 (Finale) Stray Thoughts

Last time, the game world began falling apart around Myungha as he refused to choose between his grandmother or Yeowoon dying. With only 15 days left, Myungha began to pull back from Yeowoon, even as he tried to bulk up his relationships with his friends. Myungha received an item to change any part of the story, but could not change himself to admit to Yeowoon directly that he loved him. Despite Yeowoon asking all the right questions directly, Myungha couldn’t say what needed to be said, and chose to break up. We left with Myungha falling into the abyss as the world unwound before him.

Did Myungha erase himself from Yeowoon’s memory? I’m glad his friendships are intact, but it seems like he’s experiencing echoes of Myungha.

Episode 8: Answers

Wait, why does the brand lady remember Tae Myungha?

Oh, this is upsetting. Only the brand lady and Yeowoon remember Myungha. Even his grandmother doesn’t remember.

He wrote “Please make Cha Yeowoon happy” and then he vanished. I get his panic now.

Wait, is Cha Yeowoon a PC now?

Wait, was the brand owner Myungha’s ex in the main world?

Oh no…. Tae Myungha went to see his mom before and she had started a new family and refused to see him.

I approve of the letterboxing to let us know we’re seeing the history from the physical world.

This is putting me in my Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurance Gidney feelings.

Wow. I have a lot of thoughts about this writer creating a story because he loved his friend he missed so much that he wanted to give him a second life in a game where you help him see that he is loved and that he can choose to live. “Write me a poem to make me happy.”

ARE THEY IN DIFFERENT REALITIES? WHAT THE HELL??

He’s going to find his favorite person!!! 😭

Oh, romance, never stop hitting me with lens flares to show that the love is bursting.

Yes, let’s continue those kissing lessons.

Whoa, he’s wearing pink now.

Okay, seeing them make out by the sea and then play in it with their friends after that reveal about Myungha just sent me over the edge.

Final Verdict: 9, Highly Recommended. This final episode went to some really dark places, but this is the kind of queer media that I secretly love the most. I’ve written about how grief is a big part of my experience before, and how much Eternal Yesterday helped me cope with feelings that had been in me for 15 years. I think there’s something beautiful in the melancholy of the writer who is grieving their friend in their work. The thing about the fact that everyone dies, is that those who loved us will remember us and they will miss us. A version of us continues to live on in them. When we lose someone tragically, there is a need to process those feelings, and I appreciate the desire of a writer to immortalize their friend in a story where they recognize and receive the love they wished for in life.

I love that there’s a component of death of the author here, where Myungha wants to know who he is and why he wrote things like this, because I wonder if the writer infused some of the writings Myungha gave in life since we recognized Myungha’s handwriting in the missions. He’s trying to give Myungha what he wrote that he wanted and what he wrote about love. I love that we don’t exactly what the creator’s relationship is with Myungha, but the gay in me calls to the gay in him and says that he loved his junior in Myungha the way Myungha maybe connected to in Yeowoon. I like to think that he wrote Cha Yeowoon based on how he saw Myungha, and a part of him wanted to see Myungha happy. Perhaps he felt he couldn’t give that to Myungha in life for various reasons.

I loved the game mechanics so much. I loved the side quests. I loved it because it didn’t work all the time. I know I link Shane Koyczan a lot when I’m being especially emo around here, but it’s like his poem Stop Signs where he’s desperate to connect with his crush and he’s trying everything he can think of to reach them. What it does force to recognize is what’s important. All the running around and trying to get all of these things is about taking care of the person he likes. Earning the money forced him to work at something without just receiving it from someone else. Getting Yeowoon friends made both of their lives better, and they found the other gays! I loved the debuff mechanic because it makes you pay attention to the world around them and approach situations with caution.

This show was beautiful. I haven’t seen an It Gets Better project that hit the right way for me in so long. I like that this show kinda snuck up on us with the darkness. There have been so many high profile celebrity deaths in Korea in the last few years, and there’s gotta be so many more of regular people that we don’t even know. I really love that this story is about loving lonely boys and asks the audience not to give up. I love the notion that loving someone else is a pathway to learning to love yourself. You can love for the sake of love itself. This show surprised the hell out of me, but this is going to be one of the shows I think sticks with me from this year.

[catelyngrant]

For the writer asks, how about 1, 9, 12? 😄

1. what’s the fic you're most proud of? This is a really interesting and hard one! There are a few that come to mind, in no particular order:

my house is haunted by rotten desire (CAOS, post s3, Zelda-centric): I always feel satisfied when I feel like I've a) nailed a character that I find hard to write and b) made sense of or fixed something that really frustrated me or was just plan wrong, gross, or ignored in canon. I felt like this fic accomplished both.

beckoning towards me from behind that closed door (Supergirl, Kara-centric): Gen fic doesn't usually get the same love as fic tagged with popular fandom pairings and I totally get that, but this was one of the very first Supergirl fics I wrote (shortly after season one ended) and I've always thought it was a bit underrated. I think it does a good job of exploring a lot of different aspects of and possibilities for Kara in ways that felt believable.

love leaves a mark and love leaves a strain (Supergirl, Supercat): I thought that this one explored parts of Cat in a way that I hadn't really seen, and considering what a talented and thoughtful fandom this is, that felt rare! I also really like reading/writing Kara and Cat navigating new stages of their relationship dynamic, no matter what that dynamic is, and I thought that this fic was set in an interesting moment between them.

sugar, we're going down swinging (Hacks, Ava/Deborah): I hesitate with this one because I'm really proud of the first chapter but less so about the second chapter - I was so determined to get it out before season two started, and I think if I'd spent another week or two with it, I'd be much more satisfied for having fleshed out some areas that right now leave me a little disappointed. That said, this was a fic I never expected to write, was terrified to write, gave me no small amount of grief, and really challenged me in new ways. I'd written next to no really explicit smut before, for one thing, and picking Ava/Deborah as the ship to change that was...a choice.

I was in my mid-twenties through 30 (my current age) when I wrote all of these, but I do have a few older ones that - while I'd definitely change some things - I think hold up really well for having been written when I was much younger.

9. what’s your writing process like? Lie awake at night or get caught up in daydreams while commuting, fleshing out entire worlds and specific scenes, and then being frustrated at how many of them vanish before the Divine Inspiration to actually put them on the page hits. When it does, I pretty much slam them out very quickly. This also happens when I'm facing a deadline of any sort, only without the Divine Inspiration and a lot more anxiety.

For non-fic writing (mostly poetry), it's a little different. It involves a TON of reading and being inspired by other works, which serves to get me into a mindset where I feel like I just start viewing the world a little differently and everything suddenly feels like it has potential to be a poem. Generative workshops or my local queer craft night are great, and I have so many bits and pieces of imagery/phrases/anything that feels like it might have a place in a poem someday scattered all through my life (my phone, scraps of paper, jotted in notebooks or the margins of books, voice memos, etc.)

12. What’s your perfect environment to create/write? I like working in groups with other writers, so local writing groups are great even if I don't share much of what I'm working on. At home, it's usually just me on the couch. My favorite - though rare - options are holing up at my aunt and uncle's little camp on a lake and writing on the dock or in the cozy cabin which feels like it's designed for writing, or on my mom's porch with the cats dozing nearby. I like silence when I write, at least in terms of no music/TV/talking going on in the background.

Ask me fic questions!

[cowardnthief]

Alright, I am curious. Why is Jonny Cade queercoded and what queer subtext was there in their relationship with Ponyboys? 👀

TW: mentions of abuse, violence, death, murder

also spoilers for the outsiders!! (i mean it is a 60 year old book, but still)

-------

OOH OKAY OKAY

(In all honesty, I could probably do a whole essay on this, but I'll keep it brief-ish.)

Bit of background on The Outsiders: It's a book written in the early 60s that focuses on the class divide between the rich Socs (Socials) and the working-class greasers (like, "hoods", criminals), or rather the people within each of those groups who don't feel like they fit into the binary.

Ponyboy is the protagonist of the novel. He and Johnny are both greasers and part of a gang with a few others, including Ponyboy's two older brothers and three other boys.

Let's start with Johnny. Johnny is extremely queer-coded in his own right. He's described early on as timid, shy, weak and maybe a little feminine. He's seen as the gang's "pet" and the youngest, despite being sixteen to Ponyboy's fourteen. His friends are very fond and protective of him. A lot of this behaviour comes from his trauma, being abused by his parents as well as beaten nearly to death by a Soc named Bob. However, it also falls into an archetype of stereotypical queer characters. Writing male characters in this way is a way of subtly telling an audience that they are queer. This probably wasn't done intentionally, but should be kept in mind.

Johnny's character development involves him becoming more masculine, almost. The final important act he does in the book is save children from a burning building. Ponyboy comments on the fact that he seemed braver, louder etc in that moment, all traits associated with masculinity, which is 1) a strange reaction to the situation, especially for Johnny, and 2) exactly the kind of narrative standpoint one would take to show that femininity (or queerness) is bad.

Now for Ponyboy - his queer-coding is more subtle at times, and a little different. He isn't timid or shy or scared or feminine like Johnny. (However, he does once say that he "didn't care too much for girls yet", but that his brother said he would grow out of it. This is particularly strange, considering he is fourteen already.) Early on, it's established that he feels like an outsider within his own group. He doesn't really feel like a greaser, or act like one. He likes things that greasers don't like. He watches movies, he reads, he likes to see the sunset. He considers himself different, or "other", and he feels as if he can't talk about it. His friends just wouldn't get it.

A large part of the book, in my opinion, is Ponyboy finding other "outsiders", like Cherry and Johnny. (Cherry being a Soc while Johnny is another greaser.) All three of them talked once, while at a drive-in, Ponyboy finding a particular connection with Cherry despite her not being the only girl there. They all have the same sense of feeling “other”, and not being able to talk about it for fear of being judged.

Now for Johnny and Ponyboy’s relationship, which...oh boy. Some of it is just scenes like this, which feel very queer, outright:

“‘Guess I look okay now, huh, Johnny?’

He was studying me. ‘You know, you look an awful lot like Sodapop, the way you’ve got your hair and everything. I mean, except your eyes are green.’

‘They ain’t green, they’re gray,’ I said, reddening. ‘And I look about as much like Soda as you do.’ I got to my feet. ‘He’s good-looking.’

‘Shoot,’ Johnny said with a grin, ‘you are, too.’”

Not to mention the whole chapter they spend literally just acting like a domestic gay couple while they’re on the run, just the two of them, from the police. There’s also this conversation they have while watching the sunrise in this chapter (which I’ll talk more about later once I get to the symbolism), in which they talk about being outsiders. Here are a few quotes from that:

“‘You know,’ Johnny said slowly, ‘I never noticed colors and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It seems like they were never there before.’”

“‘Well, Soda kinda looks like your mother did, but he acts just exactly like your father. And Darry is the spittin' image of your father, but he ain't wild and laughing all the time like he was. He acts like your mother. And you [Ponyboy] don't act like either one.’”

“‘You [Johnny] ain't like any of the gang. I mean, I couldn't tell Two-Bit or Steve or even Darry about the sunrise and clouds and stuff. I couldn't even remember that poem around them. I mean, they just don't dig. Just you and Sodapop. And maybe Cherry Valance.’

Johnny shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I guess we're different.’

‘Shoot,’ I said, blowing a perfect smoke ring, ‘maybe they are.’”

(Honestly, can my whole argument just be that one quote? “I guess we’re different.” // “Shoot. Maybe they are.” Queer stuff, huh?)

Later in the book, when Johnny is in the hospital, Ponyboy stresses again and again that he can’t think about him dying, that he can’t fathom a life without him. Everyone in the group is fond of Johnny, but Ponyboy acts like Johnny’s death would destroy him.

When Johnny is dying, he asks to see Ponyboy. His last words are to Ponyboy, despite Dally also being in the room. One of the other last things he does is write a letter to Ponyboy.

Johnny is also the first person Ponyboy runs to when his older brother hits him early in the book.

When Johnny dies, Ponyboy falls into denial, pretending and convincing himself that Johnny isn’t dead, because he couldn’t handle the grief. He says the reason that he doesn’t go insane with it, like Dally does, is because Johnny isn’t the only thing he loves.

This isn’t nearly all of it, but this post is already long as fuck, and I want to talk about some of the metaphors and symbols too.

Symbol #1: The hair

The is a more obvious one, as the author clearly intended it to be a metaphor, although probably not for something queer. When Johnny and Ponyboy go on the run after Johnny killed a Soc in self-defence, the two of them have to cut off their hair. This is obviously a big deal to them, especially Ponyboy, because they’re proud of their hair - it’s a symbol of the greasers, of rebellion, and it’s one of the last things they have that tie them with their gang back in the city. However, having Johnny and Ponyboy specifically cut off their hair feels like more of a symbol of them severing their ties to the greasers. They feel like outsiders within their own group already, and this is a way of showing that they’re leaving it behind, or starting to. (Shedding symbols of comphet, you know.)

Symbol #2: Sunrises and sunsets

Johnny, Cherry and Ponyboy, three characters who are outsiders within their own community, all spend time watching sunrises or sunsets. It’s one of the things that Ponyboy and Cherry bond over and talk about. Johnny and Ponyboy also watch a sunrise while they’re on the run. It’s a small thing that unites the three of them and becomes almost a symbol of their “otherness”, and thus, queercoding enters the chat. Also, the sunrise that Ponyboy and Johnny watch can symbolise the “beginning” of their relationship, as they start to see each other in a different light. 

Symbol #3: Gone with the Wind

When Johnny and Ponyboy are on the run, Ponyboy buys the book Gone with the Wind from a corner store. They read it together. The book is an idealised story of the southern, free, country life. Johnny makes comments about how the men in the book are charming and gallant and he admires them. The book symbolises both what Ponyboy and Johnny wish they could be, like happy and free and rich (and straight and masculine), and what they are, or what they’re starting to find with each other while in the countryside. When Johnny is in the hospital, he asks for a copy of the book to read. It’s one of his last requests. In my opinion, he asked for it both to remember Ponyboy and to escape to a reality where he wasn’t young and dying, to one where he was still with Ponyboy on the run, or one like in the book where none of this happened at all. The book is integral to their relationship.

Symbol #4: The poem

When Ponyboy and Johnny are watching the sunrise in the church, Ponyboy recites a poem by Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold,

Her early leaf’s a flower,

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

And Eden sank to grief.

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

At the time, the two of them both say that they don’t understand the poem. When Johnny dies later in the book, his last words to Ponyboy are to “stay gold”. In the letter he wrote for Ponyboy, which Ponyboy reads later, he says that he now understands the poem.

“I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid, everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.”

Oh boy, there’s a lot to say about this poem.

First of all, the poem symbolises what Ponyboy gave Johnny - a new outlook on life. A lens with which to see more beautiful things. Johnny said that he hadn’t really appreciated sunsets or clouds before Ponyboy pointed them out to him.

Secondly, the meaning of the poem. When you consider Johnny’s interpretation, also taking into account what sunsets and sunrises etc. mean in this book, it’s possible that the “gold” phase is Ponyboy’s acceptance of himself. Ponyboy loves Johnny. He knows he’s different, and while he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, he’s happy with it in his own way. He finds other people like him, queer, like Cherry and Johnny.

However, the poem’s whole meaning is that nothing gold can stay. That’s the message we’re left with, even with Johnny’s insistence of “staying gold”. It could honestly be referring to an array of things - perhaps Johnny himself, or life in general (given the amount of death in this book), or youth. Obviously, this whole post is about the queer undertones in the outsiders, so one could argue that it’s about a queer youth experience, especially in the past - finding someone like you, someone you love, but it not lasting forever, and it being especially difficult to find again, given the circumstances.

In the end, Johnny dies, but he leaves Ponyboy with all the things that remind him of him - sunsets, sunrises, Gone with the Wind, stargazing. And ultimately, I think that’s the “gold” that the book is referring to.

[antigoneblue]

quick, non-poemmic updates!

i wasn’t going to do this, but then realised that it’s TRULY been a while, so maybe something like this isn’t totally out of order :’) 

some of you might’ve noticed that my old sideblog, @redeyecyanide, no longer exists / is no longer accessible. i figured i’d explain that, so that nobody worries about me or worries that something bad might’ve happened that resulted in that.

i’m also kind of in a new era of my life, so i figured we’d talk that through, as well. i’m happy & content & in a good place - a better place to be in than i’d hoped at this point in time, and it’s something i am grateful for.

and i just want, you know, if anyone’s been reading my work and relating to the despair in some of those poems, or the grief, or the sadness, or any of that - it gets better. it’s getting better for me. it might not feel like it, but it will get better for you too. you just have to be more stubborn than the things that are getting you down - easier said than done, but doable. and so, so worth it.

stuff re: old blog down below! 

~

so well, here’s the whole deal w/ redeyecyanide. while i did not grow up on the internet to the same extent some of my peers did, i was definitely extremely online from when i was around 15 onwards. i don’t regret any of it and i think for the most part i had relatively healthy boundaries going - with a few exceptions, which i can confidently say i have learnt from. 

keeping that aside, as it usually happens when you are 15, and when you come back 7 years later, is that a lot of your beliefs change. i owned redeyecyanide and was active on there primarly when i was ... 18 / 19 / 20, but i was still in the process of learning & unlearning a lot of things. i often made statements that were... not accurate, with sweeping confidence, because i thought i was right. i sometimes generalised things in problematic ways, or made commentary based on my opinions which did not in any way represent how i felt about other people’s opinions. i was honestly very angry at the injustice present in the world, and learning to live with that anger and channel it into something more sustainable, productive, useful and healthy. that wasn’t the easiest thing and in some instances i feel i could’ve handled a lot of things in better and in more objective/calmer ways. 

basically, i deleted that blog because it felt like a very “there’s a lot to unpack but let’s throw away the whole suitcase” kind of moment. my values are still the same, i’m still firmly anti bigotry, but i’m also 100% sex positive / anti swerf, provided there’s informed consent btwn people who can consent & all that good stuff - which is a value i always believed in but, at the time, i hadn’t done enough unlearning to be as sex positive as i wanted. kink-shaming doesn’t make sense to me anymore, esp not under the guise of “social justice”. 

since we’re on tumblr, i unfortunately need to add that assuming people are p*dophiles at the drop of a hat, just because someone said so, definitely does not sit right with me. that’s a serious, serious allegation, and it’s important not to throw around allegations like that over... somebody shipping drarry, or whatever the new ship that everyone hates is. let’s not make callout posts for everyone under the sun, moon & solar system, please. save it for when it’s important.

i’m also 100% radically inclusive when it comes to lgbtq+ identities. i support any and all good faith identity & pronouns (and by good faith i mean, identities that are sincere/genuine and not made to poke fun at people or be degrading) and i honestly think most lgbt+ discourse is unnecessary because another person’s gender/sexuality is not your business - which is something i have always believed, but now i know that if i have to choose sides, i choose the people who are quietly existing, rather than the people who believe they shouldn’t exist or should exist elsewhere. 

i identify as “queer”, i do not identify as “lgbt” or “lgbtq” or “lgbtqia” or any other acronym. no shade at people who prefer those, just doesn’t work for me anymore. 

yeah, that’s about it. thanks for reading all the way, if you did :’) hope everyone’s doing well! 

[poetryasf-ck]

Good Grief #9 - Hannah Raymond-Cox

Hannah Raymond-Cox grew up in Hong Kong and San Francisco, and has bounced around the UK since age sixteen. She studied International Relations and Modern History at St Andrews alongside her career in poetry and her work includes original plays, slam poetry pieces, and bespoke poems. Hannah won the Stanza Slam, was a National Poetry Slam Championships Finalist for Scotland, and performed on the BBC Stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. She has gigged everywhere from the Royal Albert Hall to a tiny dive bar in Hong Kong. She is currently touring Germany as an actor and munching her way round all the Bäckerei available. Her debut book, "Amuse Girl", comes out from Burning Eye Books next year.

Why, if there was a reason, did you write this poem/these poems?

I wrote the show because I’d been approached after a gig in Edinburgh (Other Voices) and was asked whether I had a full-length spoken word show they could come see. I didn’t, and I felt like… well, why not challenge myself not only to do more long-form work, but share my diasporic story? Writing to time of 3 minutes where you’re essentially doing a persuasive monologue means that nuance and context is harder to achieve, and I wanted to frame my story not as one of moments of fear and loss but one of longterm survivorship.

Why, upon writing this poem/these poems, did you perform them?

I think that there was a sense that for me - it was important to share what abuse and the aftermath of abuse/loss looks like on a practical level, in a way that was performing victimhood but as a part of a larger queer diasporic narrative. For the audience I feel like a lot of us experience grief and loss and loneliness and I wanted to connect with others like me - to say hey, you are seen. Also, it was written to be performed. My background as an actor and spoken word poet rather than a page poet means that to me, some work is explicitly created in the medium for a reason.

How does performing this piece change how you look at what happened to you?

Not really - I feel like a lot of the changing happened during the writing process. It took me the best part of 9 months to write the show, and during the last 4 of those I was working with my director and turning in fortnightly revisions. When you’re editing hardcore like that, the preciousness and connexion to the trauma has to take a backseat in service of a good story for an audience that you can deliver consistently every night.

How do you separate artistic performance from lived personal experience?

I feel like most conscientious poets I know are aware that we perform authenticity, and that means that lived experience gets condensed and presented in a way that makes an impact. My lived experience wouldn’t rhyme, it’d have way more hesitations, deviations, and repetitions, I can’t present an hour of it and go The End - it’s a show. No one piece of work can fully articulate the constant complex changes in how I feel about what I’ve lived.

Do you find yourself affected negatively by performing this piece? If so, how do you look after yourself?

I was terrified the first time I shared it - the sense of ownership was huge, and it took a great deal of trust to hand over my script to someone, and the first time I performed it was also huge. But I now treat it like a job to a certain extent - if I were being triggered or emotionally tired out more than usual in the course of a normal acting job then I’d have had to go back to the editing table and see where I could build in safety measures for myself. For me, poetry is inherently performative, and having years of acting under my belt helps me delineate performance emotion from my own mental state. Writing helps delineate too, like POLARIS’ format of “snapshots” and “scene” literally being said helps me reset my breathing and emotional state between scenes and reminds me and the audience that this is all constructed. I’m not Brecht, but I borrow bits...

Do you practice any aftercare after performing this piece (either for yourself or audiences)? (E.g., talking to audience members who are upset, taking some time out after your performance to ground yourself, ensuring you perform in places where you feel safe etc.)

Personally, I go for a pint with friends who enjoyed the piece. I warm down the same way after my spoken word show as my traditional theatre work. If I weren’t able to perform the piece without touching the unsafe parts, then I wouldn’t perform it. I feel like part of my job as an artist is to be able to reproduce the same experience every show for an audience… The great thing about the conventions of theatre and spoken word theatre means that the safe space notion is a compact made as soon as an audience enters a space with clear performer space vs audience seating. I think it does a disservice to say that as artists we need to practice aftercare for an audience - that’s not a responsibility of the performer to police or preempt reactions. Triggers and grief are so personal that what would you warn for? Frequently, trigger warnings beyond the vaguer “mature themes” remove nuance and subtlety from a piece, I’ve found. I’d rather challenge an audience that let them self-select out with my own interpretation of concerning parts of the show...

Do you do any content warnings for this piece? Why?

I do but I keep them generic! Considering the show sits in the realm of spoken word theatre, warnings are on all marketing materials and are necessarily programmed in to the theatres’ booking systems. It’s an important part of marketing a show - to know your audience and your demographic targets. I also definitely don’t want any kiddos walking into a show created for a more mature audience. POLARIS’ content warnings are: 15+, strong language, and mental health themes. Any more than that and I feel like we’re stepping into the realm of spoiler territory and nuance removal, and I feel like I’ve given enough information to the audience in other material. That material includes biography, reviews, the short and long copy for flyers and websites, the visual design of the poster itself, and more.

Does the artist owe any kind of protection or safeguarding to their audience?

In a vacuum/ideal world, the performer has a duty to one thing and one thing only: making the best piece of art they can, which says something, and communicating that something to an audience in a reproducible and safe manner for themselves. They are not there to warn the audience, make the audience feel comfortable, or look after the audience’s reactions to their work (unless directly funded to produce media that does so).  We can't cotton-wool art because it's an important medium for raising awareness, for reflecting life back at us, and for representation. Other things too, but they're less pertinent to the conversation and a medium associated with telling a “truth” to a “power”. Triggers can come from many things, not just things that can be classed as art - we as a society don’t expect them elsewhere, what makes spoken word different?

I think that the warnings in front of a typical show (eg. strobe lights, mature themes) work well enough now. We have content warning systems for some arts (cinema and video games really stand out for the level of detail available pre-purchase) but almost nothing for others, particularly books and theatre. For cinema and videogames, solitary and personal media, that makes sense to provide a measure of information to consumers who may have the ability to pause the medium or want to allow kids to watch material beyond the suggested age rating. Theatre and books, which performance poetry most closely resemble, do not warn beyond blurbs on covers or through supplementary materials used primarily for marketing. They allow for exploration, challenging those who engage with the work in a different way.

Part of the problem with asking the performer and writer to provide content warnings and/or aftercare for the audience is that the performer/writer is usually a) too close to the work (in poetry, the content’s usually personal in nature), b) busy pre-show and post-show working on performance itself and may not want to break character of “performing”, c) drained/busy at the end of performing, and d) the only person doing everything associated with that performance! A small example: halfway through my month-long run of POLARIS at Edfringe 2017, a man who’d watched me perform cornered me immediately after and asked me to talk through his reactions to the show with him, then and there. I was in the middle of set take-down, turning around the space, was tired and mildly out of breath, was emotionally resetting from the show, and was absolutely not in the right space for the conversation he wanted to have. I'm not a psychiatrist, and I don't know about any trauma other than my own. I was one person, doing the work of 5, and in that moment, I wished desperately for another person to manage audiences - with funding, of course, that a spoken word solo show doesn’t have.

Additionally, you don’t approach an actor at a traditional theatre stage door and expect a verbal warm-down, nor do you corner a writer of a book you like and ask they help you with the themes/your reaction to their work. Not to go all “Death of the Author” on this, but like - people have approached me post-show with a myriad of different interpretations on “emotionally fraught” sections. They ranged from reasonable (depression) to out of the blue to me (eating disorders) - even with my imagination on full blast I could not have predicted their personal reactions to the work. If I listed every element of the show I could think of, I still would have missed a content warning that occurred to someone somewhere. The nature of the piece is that - as adults seeing a show on queer themes and mental health, the obligation is on the person who’s chosen to consume that media to decide whether it’s appropriate or healthy for them.

If the piece has funding beyond the usual spoken word operation, in which the poet is performer, marketer, director, producer, and front of house, then there are more options. It could be good to have content warnings but in a way that isn’t visible to people unless they want to see them (so a visible warning saying ‘content that may be disturbing, ask a member of staff, or similar). That would keep both camps (the ‘I need to knows’ vs ‘I don’t want any spoilers’) happy, I reckon. Box office/FOH would be provided with a list, which the performer/producer draws up prior to the tour as a part of the tour pack. There could also be further supplementary materials, like a website for content warnings. A bigger budget, like for Trainspotting: Live! enables you to do fun things like have scratch cards with content warnings that you physically have to work for to reveal… Or you could try and set up a nationwide age rating scheme like for video games and films, but that requires maintenance and a solid review board, neither of which the spoken word scene seems likely to be able to do.

In conclusion, I think that if you engage in art then you're bringing yourself and your experiences and your worldview to it: the artist can't control if those things include triggers beyond a typical age rating and “mature themes”. So if, for example, extensive talk of food triggers you then do your due diligence pre-show and at worst, don't come - it's in the synopsis of POLARIS, on flyers, on the website, and more marketing media. If you're triggered during the show then that genuinely sucks but as far as I'm aware, it's unfortunately part of having dealt with trauma. As for post-show, well, the BBC provides links to Samaritans and other organisations at the end of their programmes. I’d rather put the onus on the audience to find ways of processing art that work for them, and encourage them to take responsibility for their reactions.

Do you believe writing about areas such as grief, loss or trauma is a form of healthy catharsis or memorialisation?

I’m not qualified to answer this question, like, at all. I’m not a therapist working directly with the person who’s going through it. So...it depends on the individual. Writing can be healthy! Or it can lead to fixation.

What kind of warnings signs would you point out to someone new to poetry or performance who was performing about their traumas?

I suppose I’d ask the person to ask themselves why they’re doing it, if they’ve got another safe place to process trauma, and to gently caution them from using poetry as a form of therapy. If you find performing the poems trigger you or leave you mentally unsafe, don’t do it. Work on editing, work on the craft, and by understanding how best to say what you want to say, you can create distance and reproducibility for performing poetry.

[richincolor]

We're happy to welcome Adam Garnet Jones to Rich in Color today. Fire Song is out in the world now and he answered a few questions about the novel, the film, and his writing.

Fire Song Synopsis: Shane is still reeling from the suicide of his kid sister, Destiny. How could he have missed the fact that she was so sad? He tries to share his grief with his girlfriend, Tara, but she’s too concerned with her own needs to offer him much comfort. What he really wants is to be able to turn to the one person on the rez whom he loves—his friend, David.

Things go from bad to worse as Shane’s dream of going to university is shattered and his grieving mother withdraws from the world. Worst of all, he and David have to hide their relationship from everyone. Shane feels that his only chance of a better life is moving to Toronto, but David refuses to join him. When yet another tragedy strikes, the two boys have to make difficult choices about their future together.

With deep insight into the life of Indigenous people on the reserve, this book masterfully portrays how a community looks to the past for guidance and comfort while fearing a future of poverty and shame. Shane’s rocky road to finding himself takes many twists and turns, but while his path doesn’t always offer easy answers, it does leave the reader optimistic about his fate.

Crystal's Review

How did Fire Song come into being?

I started writing Fire Song as a feature film. I was looking for a story that was rooted in my own seminal experiences with isolation, suicide, and depression, but I also wanted to talk about the epidemic of suicide in Indigenous communities. I heard so many non-Indigenous people asking why, as though Indigenous youth suicide was an impossible riddle. The reasons why our young people are in so much pain could not be more clear to me. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone who is paying the remotest attention to Indigenous people in Canada being confused by why our young people are taking their lives. I wanted to write a story that could touch on the multitude of intersecting systemic issues at play in Indigenous communities - issues that make some communities particularly vulnerable to the spiritual hopelessness that we call suicidality.

Readers often wonder how much of the author's own story is on the page. Can you share a bit about some of the similarities between you and Shane?

Shane's story isn't my story, but he and I have some similarities. Shane grew up in a community where there is a war between Christians and traditionalists. I grew up in a lot of different places, but I've never had a real community except the ones that have welcomed me in; I've always been a guest. I've always been an outsider;Shane has always been home. We're both Queer and Indigenous. Neither of us are comfortable with labels. I'm Cree/Metis and Shane is Anishinaabe. Shane found love when he was very young, but I never did. He and I are both bookworms and high-achievers - the kind of kids that teachers liked. We both stayed with people we didn't love for too long because we were afraid of hurting them. We're both hungry to see everything the world has to offer, but we crave community and connection most of all. We have both wanted to die over and over throughout the course of our young lives. It's easier for us to see a path to the spirit world than it is to see our path to the future.

If you could step back in time, what would you tell your younger self?

So many things: Stop running and try to enjoy the climb. Go to therapy. Now. You are someone worth taking care of. No affirmation from the outside world will ever touch the sadness inside, so stop looking for others to give you permission to live. Try to love yourself. Try and fail. Never stop trying.

For Tara, writing is an essential part of her life. She seems to find her voice through poetry. "But I keep thinking that a really good one--the right magic combination of words--might save your life." Do you believe the same? Have any poems or specific pieces of writing had a big impact in your life?

Reading has been incredibly important to me. Certain books have come along at different points in my life and changed me, not because they were about anything close to my own experience, but because the aching humanity, the search for connection, and the fight for survival at the core of great writing has a clearer resolution and meaning than the yearnings and tragedies of my own life. Hard things in books are always beautiful, and packed with lessons about how to live. Hard things in my own life leave me dizzy and confused. The act of reading (and writing) brings clarity to that experience. I remember once, after moving in with a boyfriend, being hit by a wave of serious depression. I wanted to die (for good reason, for no reason) as I had many times before. I went out to walk alone and I wrote down a conversation between myself and my depression in a little notebook. Through writing that conversation, I realized that the sadness would always be with me, no matter what happened in my life. It was a kind of companion that I had to learn to live with. I'll always remember that night, because the writing allowed by to separate that sadness from my own identity. I came to a kind of peace with my depression as with a sibling that I've fought with my whole life. If I hadn't been able to work through that on the page, I would have tempted that darkness by putting my body in danger.

Creating a film and writing a novel are both storytelling, but what were some of the distinct challenges of each?

One of the most difficult things about making a film is trying to maintain your vision for the story while under the pressure of time and budget, and while a hundred other artists are making thousands of tiny alterations to the image you have in your head. The inverse problem with writing the novel is that it is just you and the page. No other voices. No one to tell you when you're doing well or when you're lost.

Do you see yourself writing more novels in the future or will you keep your focus on film?

I would love to write more novels. I have a couple of other books in mind, but it's difficult to know exactly how to begin.

Who are the storytellers who have been inspirational in your life?

So many! James Baldwin, Eden Robinson, Toni Morrison, Richard Van Camp, Louise Erdrich, Salman Rushdie, Jennifer Egan, John Steinbeck, Tommy Pico, Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Halfe, Larry Kramer, Toy Kushner, Thomas King, Edward Albee...

Thanks for your time and for sharing so much with us!

[adventures-in-transmania]

Story time #1, the beginning

So, unlike media tends to represent trans people, I didn't know as a kid. I had no problem being called a tomboy in middle school, from what little I can remember. I do remember getting along far easier with boys than girls, but I also had almost every girl I tried being friends with at that age pull some backstabbing, gossipy, clique-y bullshit and who has time for that?

That being said, I don't think I ever had that phase in which I tried to be overly feminine to fit in, which some trans people go through. I wore dresses and skirts in elementary school without any feeling that it wasn't right. I also grew up in a house with a mentally ill biological mother (BPD) who was also a lesbian. I grew up with my bio father out of the house (saw him occasionally, not all that important tbh) and my mother having girlfriends. It's just how life was. I didn't need it explained, I didn't even realize it was different. It wasn't a big deal.

Fast forward to what I CAN remember, my coming out story. Somewhere around 10th grade I stumbled upon the term transgender. I'd been supportive of LGBT+ for quite a few years by then. I thought about my sexuality occasionally. For the most part, I was into men, but I remember not caring if I ended up with a woman. I remember the whispers of my classmates, calling me a dyke when they thought I couldn't hear them, the rumors about my mother being gay, therefore I had to be gay. They really didn't bother me. The people I considered friends didn't mention it or even care from what I gathered. I didn't really discuss lgbt issues with people from school. My friends were teenaged boys and would squirm if you even mentioned anything queer.

Luckily for me, I had friends online. One was a very mature for her age girl who provided a very positive light in an otherwise dark time. I loved her as a best friend and wouldn't trade my time with her for anything. The other was a boy from the deep South living with a religious family. They both met me as a guy character on a website of which I spent a lot of time on during high school. At some point I told them I wasn't born a guy. They didn't care. Online I was a guy.

That's not to say I knew for certain. I was still figuring things out. I didn't have dysphoria at the time. I had no qualms with people using she/her pronouns.

Sometime in 10th grade, I came out to my parent (my bio mother), thinking someone who identified as a lesbian would at the very least understand, talk, maybe even support their child coming out as trans.

Here's a plot twist, they didn't. Here's an even bigger plot twist. They also came out as trans. So, you'd think a trans parent (haha, jokes to be made here) would support their trans child. You'd be wrong. This has caused me much pain, much grief, just 'much' over the years.

There was six years of silence on the issue. We just didn't talk about it.

It wasn't really an issue that bugged me until a couple years into college. Well, other than the issue with my cousin's wedding. I think It was during either my junior or senior year, my cousin got married. I was in the wedding as a reader of some poem. I grew up with her in my life, she lived with us for some time. My parent made me wear a dress. Maybe that was my phase of trying to be overtly feminine, because I went all out. I wore the dress, 6 inch 'coral' heels, painted my nails, and probably wore make-up (which I never really bothered with, even as a girl). I wasn't happy about wearing the dress at this point in my life, I would have much rather been in a suit. My parent, who at this point had come out to me as trans, was able to wear a suit. No one in our family questioned it. It was a sore spot for me for a while. Maybe that was my first experience with blatantly dysphoria, but I can't say for certain. What I saw at the time was my parent, a trans man to me, a cis lesbian to everyone else, was able to wear a suit, but I was made to be uncomfortable in a dress.

I've talked about this since then (8 years after the fact) with both my parent and my cousin and the reasons make sense, according to our society. I'm now willing to accept it was necessary and I'm pretty much over it.

The other instance that I'm not over and will probably always regret is prom. My senior year, I got into this thing with someone who had been a very, very good friend. It was hard, probably based on senior class nostalgia. I liked him, his intelligence. I don't know what he saw in me. He was traditional, conservative, as most people were where I grew up, with it being a small town with 3 churches in 2 square miles.

We spent a lot of time in the library after school. I stayed to spend time with him, mostly. Over Christmas break during our senior year, I confessed that I liked him, which turned out to be reciprocated for whatever reason, or at least he said. A few months after, we discussed prom. I don't recall either of us being entirely enthused about it, but seeing it as something one should experience in high school, as well as the idea that most of our friends were going.

I believe I mentioned once about my thought to wear a suit to prom. A friend of mine who identified as a cis woman at the time, a lesbian, had worn a suit. I wanted to, also. He said he wouldn't go with me, then. I gave in, as I did at that time. I didn't have many people who actually wanted to be with me in any capacity (there's a bit more to this story, but I'm trying to be concise), so to experience something so paramount to the high school experience, I wanted to be included.

At the time I still identified as a woman to anyone who knew me offline. I wasn't dysphoric, I was just a tomboy. I had started to go by Riley online but couldn't really do so in school or anywhere else. I didn't really discuss anything with anyone offline so the two friends I mentioned earlier online really helped. They may not have completely understood but they let me talk about it and accepted me no matter what.

Another major thing I remember from high school was this one instance with my friend and guidance counselor. I had been 'turned in,' for a lack of a better word for attempting to cut at school (yeah, fucked up thing to do, surprise surprise. I wasn't good at coping with emotions, so sue me). I tried talking to my guidance counselor about potentially being trans and having a bit of a rough time with it, which took a lot of courage to do. The only other person I even thought I could go to had been my parent, as misguided as that was. The guidance counselor hadn't even heard of the term and even after explaining it, didn't have any sort of advice (to be expected after first hearing about it). There was no follow up, no conversation, nothing. Any sort of research would have revealed that trans people (teenagers especially) are at a higher risk of committing suicide and higher risk of being bullied. But it's easy to fall through the cracks when you're not a face or name people remember.

Here's one of my favorite memories from high school. Sometime during my senior year I took a psychology class. It was offered as an elective and I had free time. I would have rather been in a class than having a study hall. The class was taught by someone who had only taken a psychology course in college about 15-20 years ago, which explains a lot. She was certainly not qualified in any capacity to be teaching this class. I had several run ins with this particular teacher, but I kept my head down and did my work for the most part. One of her classes led to a discussion on gun laws and ownership. I was naive at the time, but she made a comment about how she should be able to own a gun so if someone came onto her front lawn, she could defend her property. That was the mentality of a lot of people in this small, conservative town. Great stuff.

So, another class we were talking about biased and unbiased studies. I don't remember the specific topic, but it had to pertain to something hormonal. I brought up the idea that to have a completely unbiased study, you would need test subjects that were AFAB on testosterone and AMAB on estrogen. She couldn't even imagine the concept. That night, I wrote an entire paper on why AMAB people would take estrogen and vice versa. I didn't mention being trans as a reason until the very last line. My biggest regret in life, just before that prom fiasco, is never giving her the paper.

[moddisms]

Wilson, Mara. “‘Worse Things’: Sandy and Rizzo and Me.” Blog. The Toast, May 3, 2016. http://the-toast.net/2016/05/03/grease-sandy-and-rizzo-and-me/.

(Times New Roman, size 12, double spaced.) Finding this article was an adventure in coming across something deeply sensitive in a bizarre context.  I found this blog post after exploring Autostraddle, a website for queer and feminist narratives (of which I belong to both), and finding a post talking about “all the gays loving Grease”.  I am an Incorrect Gay because I have never watched Grease.  The mass impromptu studying of Grease during my five-hour shift at work last night may, however, have changed my desire from “none” to “obligatory”.  

I also found another fantastic article on Thursday – reviewing Assasin’s Creed, a game that has completely infatuated me within the past few weeks.  So much so, that I almost chose a night of PS4 over obsessively going to the gym (EDNOS being one of my fond trauma coping mechanisms).  Assassins Creed and the wonderfully funny review of it will get a blog post of its very own in time (right, Michaela?) but for now I want to focus on “Worse Things”.

First:  the author of this blog post is of deep, personal significance.  Mara Wilson is the child star actor from Matilda, and one of the few child actors that can have the title of having grown up mostly alright (as far as the forward presentation can tell).  Little Matilda and Little Michaela have lots in common.  From being a bit weird, hyper-intelligent and self-ostracising to having the same haircut and big brown doe eyes.  She leans on the “cute” side of such accessories while I comfortably sit closer to “Holy Fuck, is that a child or a frog?”.

I only thought to google the author’s name after finishing her beautiful essay, in the hopes to find more of her writing.  Fortunately for me, I believe that Mara Wilson has continued to write, though less-so in the easily accessible world of online essays and more in the realm of “pay money to read this” books.  That is ok. I would happily give her my money if and when I have any.

“I was nine when I first saw Grease, and I had no idea why I hadn’t seen it sooner. Not only were musicals my favourite kind of movie, this was a musical about teenagers. Maybe it was all the grown-ups telling me I’d “grow out of” everything that caused me grief as a preteen (anxiety attacks, earaches, my potbelly — none of which I ever did grow out of) or seeing all the cool things my three teenage brothers got to do, but I wanted desperately to be a teenager. I wanted to believe Grease was an accurate portrayal of what it was to be a teen.” (Mara Wilson, Worse Things) When I was a child, I did not have any interest in being a teenager.  It looked shitty.  I was right.  It was shitty.   However, by the time sixteen-seventeen rolled around, I was being bathed in all of the “Teenagerisms” you could imagine.  I was living as per Katy Perry’s lyrics the Teenage Dream.  I was going out into the night, drinking cider, skinny dipping in the ocean.  I was kissing a handsome boy.  We swept the girl-crushes under the rug for a little while longer; they had no place, yet.  

While trauma has mitigated much of the joy of those years, I do not deny that they were aesthetically stunning.  A bunch of young almost-adults, set at night time on a sub-tropical island, diving off a pier without an adult in sight.  Kissing, laughing, being young and daring and stupid.  The somewhat real threat of stepping onto a manta ray or disturbing a shark adding to the chaos thrumming in our collective hearts.  There are still a million pictures in my mind, waiting for me to draw them.   

People have written films, poems and books trying to get close to encapsulating what it feels to have these quintessentially “teenage liberty” moments.   Much of being young 20s has been making peace with the fact that, in the context of my life, those moments are for the most part over because I have responsibilities now and my hormones are more distant relatives than constant gremlins.  I don’t go out all night because I have pets and flatmates to leave behind worrying.  I had pets and parents to think about when I was a teenager too, but my teenager status made me an asshole.

In spite of the difference of experience, I deeply understand Mara’s perspective of finding a literary work and idolising the message of what it says a “teenager” is.  So much (problematically adult-written literature) is concerned with illustrating that.  I hope that I am still close enough to the whispers of teenagerdome that I can appropriately tell my teenaged story.  I hope I can offer another narrative of what it was – but maybe an uglier one.

     Why does Mara Wilson’s essay affect me so deeply?

She talks about seeing herself within Rizzo, the aggressive leader of the female-gang within Grease.  Mara also identifies that Sandy, the sweetheart who turns bad to “get the guy” is her least favourite character – the reason being that she sees herself within Sandy, too.  

It is not the content of the essay (Grease) that affects me so deeply.  It is Mara’s voice.  She time and time again makes it clear that this essay is about her engagement with Grease, not what has been interpreted en-masse. 

“They’re never sure what they loved about it in the first place. I don’t know why they loved it. I only know why I loved it.“   

  As a reader, I am also a deep fan of embedded quotes.  Not the little ones that run seamlessly along the lines of an essay, as per my NCEA instructions, but the blocks of thought or feeling that the author then spends two paragraphs unpacking.  

I love that stuff.  

I love personal interpretation.  

I think it is calming and refreshing to me to see people unafraid of their engagement to something, in a social climate where we are just recovering from the era of feeling like we needed to “not give a shit” to be accepted.  It was easier to control us when that was how we felt.

(To see this as God intended, please https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xkrwYQMIynDpiT6d_sOHpVHh8H8AsbG8hvWJsZQSaJA/edit?usp=sharing.  Here we have sexy Times New Roman)