#in my heart its a metaphor for her discovering her lesbianism

[antiparticular]

I hate disney as much as the next self respecting person but tell me why show yourself from frozen 2 makes me sob like a little baby every time I hear it

[finallythebest]

Books That Will Ruin Your Life

(trigger warnings under the cut)

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

This book, which is about 800 pages long, is one of the best pieces of literature I have ever read. It follows four friends after they move to New York City and pursue their goals, but most of the story focuses on one of the men: Jude St. Francis, who has a mysterious past that has wrecked him emotionally and physically. But despite the darkness of the subject matter (and it gets DARK) the acts of love and kindness and friendship from the people in Jude's life will bring you to tears. It’s a gorgeous study of trauma, human relationships, and the marriage of joy and pain that inevitably comes with living. I read it two months ago and have thought about it every day since. It’s one of those books you want everyone to read and no one to read. (DEFINITELY check out the trigger warnings for this one.)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

This book is a sprawling political fantasy, packed with detail and diversity and some of the best, most complex worldbuilding I've ever seen. Baru grows up under the shadow of imperialism and eventually joins a rebellion to break free of the empire that has begun to take over the world. She's also a lesbian, which is forbidden in the new empire, but against herself is drawn to the enigmatic Duchess Tain Hu. There are devastating twists, loves, and heartbreaks that will break your heart along with Baru's. To say anything else would be a spoiler, but if you like complex, morally ambiguous fantasy, check this one out.

As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCan

This book follows a man named Jacob as he slowly falls in love with a fellow soldier during the seventeenth century English Revolution. After the war, they attempt to establish a utopian farming commune and keep their relationship together. This book is a really interesting foray into 17th century England, but it is ultimately a dark, passionate tale of obsession and vindication that will leave you as sick with the actions of the protagonist as he is with himself.

The People in the Trees, by Hanya Yanagihara

This book is written as a memoir of a disgraced scientist, who discovers a hidden tribe in a small Pacific island that he believes holds the key to a longer (and even immortal) life. You almost forget that the events of the book are fiction and not a real memoir--everything described seems meticulously researched and vividly real. As always, Yanagihara’s writing is gorgeous, absorbing, and well-paced. It's a haunting tale of how science, hubris, and greed can lead to someone's personal downfall, as well as colonialism and cultural genocide.

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

You might have already heard of this one, but I had to put it on the list anyway! After a traumatic accident kills Theo Decker's mother, his life is thrown into turbulence and eventual crime, all stemming from a stolen painting. The story is tense, beautifully written, and will make you root for yet another morally gray narrator. For fans of dark thrillers, art history, homoerotic friendship, and/or coming-of-age stories, this one is for you.

Daytripper, by Fàbio Moon and Gabriel Bà

Although Daytripper is a graphic novel, it deserves a spot on this list. It follows Bràs, a Brazilian writer, and his journey through specific turning points in his life, each represented as a "death." The art is gorgeous and the story flows impeccably, capturing the beautiful mundanities and joys of life. This book will leave you touched, inspired, and deeply affected.

The Vintner's Luck, by Elizabeth Knox

After a vintner saves his life, an angel named Xas visits him every year for a single night. As the vintner grows, so does their relationship, just like a fine vintage. It's difficult to say too much about the plot without spoiling the story, but I can say that this book explores the nuances of human relationships and the love we feel for each other, as well as the hate and fear that can pervade those relationships.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest American novelists and Beloved is my favorite of her works. The book follows Sethe, an ex-slave, and her daughter Denver as they reckon with a ghost from Sethe's past that begins to haunt them more literally than metaphorically. The story is both captivating and difficult to read, but Morrison's writing is gorgeous and the characters come to life on the page. It superbly explores the depth of trauma and motherhood, as well as depicting the horrors of slavery in a way that doesn't feel cartoonish or exploitative.

Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng’s work has gotten a lot of hype recently, and for good reason. This book follows a family after the middle child, Lydia, drowns. We see the buildup to Lydia’s death and its brutal aftermath, as relationships are challenged within the family. It’s a brilliant look at familial dysfunction, generational curses, and interracial marriage in 1970s America, and a deeply haunting portrayal of how these issues can tear apart a family.

Trigger warnings:

A Little Life: graphic self harm, suicide/suicidal thoughts, graphic child sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, child physical and emotional abuse, disordered eating, forced prostitution of a minor, discrimination against disabled characters, PTSD, drug abuse/addiction, child death, mental instability, emotional manipulation, gaslighting.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant: homophobia, eugenics, violence.

As Meat Loves Salt: rape, domestic violence, physical violence.

The People in the Trees: child sexual assault, child physical and emotional abuse, suicide, cultural genocide, animal abuse.

The Goldfinch: substance abuse, underage drinking and drug abuse, suicidal behaviors/attempts, age gap relationship, child neglect and abuse, violence, racial slurs, casual racism.

Daytripper: suicide, graphic self-harm, graphic violence.

Beloved: racism, slavery, child death, graphic violence.

Everything I Never Told You: child death, racism, xenophobia.

[palimpsessed]

The Welsh Red Dragon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Social Activism

The inspiration behind Shepard’s pins

(original post with full artwork here.)

So, I spent A LOT of time thinking about the kind of pins our good friend Shepard (from Omaha, NE) would have on his denim jacket. Like a lot. Like an obsessive amount of time. I made a list, which seemed appropriate for this fandom. And because I’m a nerd and this sort of thing really interests me, and I’m proud of what I came up with, and because I think some of these items open up the possibility for some good, good literary analysis, I decided to make a whole post dedicated to Shepard’s pins. You’re welcome.

First, a little bit about my thought process. How did I decide what kind of pins to give Shepard? Well, he’s a guy full of stories. Stories that he can’t wait to tell anyone and everyone. And stories that others (mostly Maybes) have told him, once he’s earned their confidence. So, I wanted his pins to tell a story, his story in particular. What is the story that Shepard wants to tell about himself? More precisely, what is the story he wants to tell his new magickal friends on a disastrous summer holiday? The story is that of his own magickal credibility. His journey to magic (his come to Crowley moment, perhaps?) (I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry…) and his trustworthiness as evidenced by all of the Maybes he’s met along the way. He’s gotten drunk off dandelion wine with a creek dryad, given a toothbrush to a Sasquatch. spilled the tea with a jackalope, midwifed a centaur foal. Shep’s journey is just as impressive as Simon’s, and while Simon has been collecting notches on his dead dark creature bedpost (that’s a weird fucking metaphor…) (and now I’m thinking about dark creatures and Simon’s bedposts…so, you’re welcome, Basilton), Shep’s been collecting notches of the friendly variety. (Shoutout to @adamarks who did some super lovely analysis on Simon and Shep as mirrors here: https://adamarks.tumblr.com/post/188046272067/ok-so-when-shepard-said-he-was-cursed-the-first). So, I decided that I wanted to use Shep’s pins as a way to show the notches on his bedpost, so to speak. (Okay, I’m really losing this metaphor, but I think you’re still with me.)

Let’s dive in!

(I’m working my way down one side of his jacket at a time, for those following along at home.)

RIGHT SIDE

Welsh Dragon: I made this one very large, and easy to spot on his right shoulder. Of all of his accoutrements, this one felt like the most important. Mainly, because of Simon. Simon is, after all, half-Welsh. (The Mage, may he rest in pain, came to Watford from Wales.) And, of course, Simon, just like the Welsh Dragon, is a red dragon. (Or in the process of becoming one? Or a half-dragon? Or a dragon kitten?…) And the dragon that Simon and Baz fought on the Watford lawn, when they first worked together, and first shared magic, was a red dragon. Of course, the actual dragon in question here is Margaret. Shepard would absolutely have a pin to commemorate his friendship with her. And since I was going to give him a pin with a dragon, I knew I was going to have to use the Welsh Dragon because it would perfectly capture his burgeoning friendship with Simon, as well. Now, I want to go on a slight detour here (this blog post will be its own Odyssey) and talk more about the Welsh Red Dragon. I took the design for the pin from the Welsh flag, which is the thing that first made me think more about Simon’s Welsh connection. I’m not really making a point here, I just think it’s fascinating! There’s a lot of Welsh lore about the Red Dragon (and Margaret herself calls Simon “Great Red” - that ‘R’ is capitalized, by the way, so this seems to be a proper name for the kind of dragon that she thinks Simon is). Full disclosure, I am not Welsh and I am not a scholar on any of this by any means. That being said, a cursory, and super academic, perusal of the Wikipedia article on the Welsh Dragon led me to a few different history websites that linked the symbol of the red dragon with Merlin and King Arthur (son of Uther Pendragon, literally dragon head). Merlin, one of the most well-known magical figures and Arthur, one of the most well-known Chosen One figures in literary tradition. I know very little about Arthurian legend, and Welsh history, and dragon lore, though, so I’m going to just say, do a little research on your own when you’re bored and feeling nerdy!

Resist!: Shep is a young black man (and reasonable human being) living in the U.S. during the [redacted] Administration. I should hope this one is self-explanatory.

Hoover Dam: At some point in his visits to see Blue, I’m sure Shepard stopped off at the gift shop and bought himself a souvenir pin to mark the incredible experience he had making friends with an actual river. (This pin design is based on an actual souvenir pin of the Hoover Dam I found on Google Images—along with most of the other pin designs. I think it’s vintage, which just felt even more like Shepard to me, because he’s the kind of guy who would appreciate stuff that’s got a past.)

Deathly Hallows: I mean, IF the Harry Potter books/movies exist in the Simon Snow universe (which hasn’t been confirmed, as far as I know, by our Queen) I’m sure Shepard would have been totally into it as a kid, and probably would have found greater significance in its magical lore once he discovered that ACTUAL MAGIC EXISTS! So, he would have a pin to show his belief in the magickal world, and maybe also as a nostalgic reminder of when magic was still just something fictional he could turn to for escapism (and not something that would result in being cursed by a demon…).

The Truth is Out There: So, I know virtually nothing about The X-Files (my sister was obsessed with it to the point that she wanted to become a FBI agent for a few years, but I never watched it), but I’m sure Shepard is a fan. If nothing else, the sentiment is awfully apropos.

So It Goes: This one is very hard to see. It sort of looks like a black teardrop with a bar on top of it (it’s supposed to look like a bomb). The pin I based this off of reads “So It Goes”, which from my very superficial research, is a line repeated in Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five every time someone dies. I don’t know anything more about it, other than that it is a Kurt Vonnegut-inspired pin available for purchase on Etsy, and Shep mentions that he wanted to get a Vonnegut quote tattoo, even though “everybody has those.”

Green Alien Head: You will never be able to convince me that Shepard does not 10,000% believe in the existence of aliens. If he were still in the U.S. during the Area 51 Raid, I’m sure he would have stopped by, just, you know, for science…(I’m thinking he was probably still in the UK, but I guess we’ll see in AWTWB.)

Centaur: This one is also hard to see, but I took the design from a pin I found of one of the centaurs (the blue-haired, blue-bodied one, if that rings a bell for you) from Disney’s Fantasia. (Fun fact: I was super into Fantasia as a littlun, and I attribute my lifelong love for classical music in large part to the centaur sequence and my latent lesbianism—I mean, it was ludicrously erotic. Watch it sometime and tell me it would not make an impression on a sapphic three-year-old.) Midwifing a centaur foal was probably a very emotional and formative experience for Shepard. Buying this pin would be his way of remembering that experience, and the excitement and gratitude he likely felt to have been entrusted with that kind of acceptance from the centaur(s).

Jackalope: It doesn’t help that this pin is almost the same color as Shepard’s jacket, but it’s based off a design of a jackalope’s head that, again, I found on Google Image search (honestly, I don’t know how I ever made art without it). We know that Shepard once got some gossip from a jackalope, who vented to him about magicians calling “themselves ‘magicians’”, like “they’re the only ones with magic”. (This is totally irrelevant, but I always think of Americans when I read this. I am an American, by the way. America is a continent, but those of us living in the U.S. calls ourselves Americans, like everyone else living in America doesn’t matter.) Anyway, the jackalope offered Shepard some valuable insight into the political workings of the magickal world, so it gets its own pin.

LEFT SIDE

Pansexual Pride Flag Pin: I mean, technically, canonically, we don’t know what Shepard’s sexuality (or asexuality) is, but I just get some vibes from him. Plus, if we take him as a mirror for Simon (who is somewhere on the bi-plus spectrum), it’s not a far cry to imagine he also identifies somewhere on that spectrum.

Pentagram: This is another symbol that I chose based on my interpretation of Shepard’s character, and not so much on a Maybe or a story that he mentioned. The pentagram, or pentacle, is typically associated with the occult and witchcraft, which is something that could potentially also be said of Shep.

Sasquatch: You don’t go backpacking—or not backpacking—and introduce a Sasquatch to the benefits of dental hygiene without getting yourself a souvenir of the hike.

I [heart] Mystery Spot: The Mystery Spot is a weird sort of phenomenon in California (my home state). It’s a place outside the beach town of Santa Cruz that boasts of a “gravitational anomaly” on its website. I went once, years ago, and while you’re there, it can feel pretty convincing. (Also, I was probably like 10, so…) People outside of California will likely never have heard of this place, but driving around here (at least in the Bay Area, where I am, which isn’t that far from Santa Cruz) you’ll see yellow Mystery Spot bumper stickers on cars everywhere. I’m not really sure what the thing is with the bumper stickers. Like, I’m sure not that many people actually think it’s legit, and maybe it’s like one of those things that Californians just do (like freak out and forget how to drive when we feel water falling from the sky). But yeah, these bumper stickers are everywhere. Anyway, Shepard drives around a lot. He knows about the Vampires of Las Vegas (how is that not an indie rock band?) and the Katherine Hotel, and the Next Blood. So, he’s probably made it past Nevada and into California before. And while he was there, it’s not a great stretch of the imagination that someone who chases after magic wouldn’t wind up at a place called the Mystery Spot and get himself a pin while he was there. (And maybe even a bumper sticker.)

Black Power Fist: Unfortunately, this one is also hard to see, because the fist is black and I didn’t have anything to go over the outlines of the fingers with, which I sort of didn’t think about when I colored it. This one also feels self-explanatory. Shepard is black. Blackness has long been treated in itself as a crime by non-black members of law enforcement, and just the general racist population of the U.S. Young black men are especially vulnerable to racially motivated violence. I’m sure Shep, who drives all over the country by himself and gets into high speed chases at night in the middle of nowhere Nebraska while hunting super shifty rando Maybes has had a run-in or two. Stay safe, Shep!

Every Pronoun Belongs Here [Trans Pride Flag background]: Also, super hard to see because the letters are too small to read. I found this exact pin in a basket by the register at my local bookshop. (Support local bookshops, people!) They were being sold as a fundraiser for a LGBTQ club at one of the high schools, and I loved the idea that I could help them raise money and add this pin to my own growing collection to show off my support for trans rights. (Support trans rights and trans people, people!) I decided to give Shepard this same pin, because I could imagine him having an almost identical book buying experience in a dozen other towns that he’s probably visited. And I love the simplicity of the message, because it’s one of belonging, which EVERYONE is desperately seeking, no matter who they are or how they identify, and Shepard, and every character in this picture, is no exception. (Plus, it seemed like a cool way to connect my pin collection with Shep’s. Maybe I should have mentioned the fact that I’m also a pin person at the beginning? I walk to work and on my lunch breaks, so I carry all of my stuff in a backpack. And I proudly display my random pin collection on my backpack. Including several Simon Snow-related pins.)

Don’t Panic: This was based off a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy pin. I don’t really know anything about the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (including if it’s okay to abbreviate it as HGG? THGTTG? whatever), even though I did watch the movie years back when it was on TV and I still lived with my parents who had a TV. But the sentiment felt appropriate, and Shepard is a sort of magickal hitchhiker. Apart from managing to hold down a job at Dick Blick, he appears to lead a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. He tells Penny, “the road is my teacher”, and if that’s not a hitchhiker slogan, I don’t know what is. (Ass, gas, or grass?)

Black Lives Matter: They do. Just sayin’.

Magic Troll Doll: When I was growing up, the Troll doll was all the (nightmare-inducing) rage. Trolls are one of those magickal creatures that are continually mentioned in the series. Shepard talks about lonely trolls under bridges. Simon talks about killing trolls. Agatha would rather kiss a troll. And Baz was kidnapped by numpties, who are sort of like trolls. I couldn’t not include a troll. And the Troll doll specifically felt perfect, because the full name was Magic Troll Doll. You can bet if Shepard had to pick a troll-related pin, it would be a magic(k)al one.

[Asshole]: This is another Kurt Vonnegut pin. It looks like a messily drawn asterisk (*), but it’s actually meant to be an asshole (taken from the preface of Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions, and drawn by Vonnegut himself). I just thought, why the fuck not? So, here. Have an asshole pin. (I should have put it on a buttonhole…)

HONOURABLE MENTION

Shepard’s Phone Case: Remember that line I quoted earlier, about Shep wanting to get a Vonnegut quote tattoo? Well, when I was trying to figure out what to put on his phone case, I thought that seemed like a reasonable place to start. So, I googled Vonnegut quotes, to see if I could find one that I thought Shepard would like. Here’s the quote: “a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” I just loved that for Shepard.

[bluebrine]

it’s still... odd to me that other people had such different experiences growing up with this series than i did. i had such a personal relationship with it... seeing others talk about the sequels, what they liked and disliked for the series- and it’s like, really? we had very different childhoods (...story of my life, ha).

in my elementary school, our library only had one of the books- Dealing With Dragons (the one with this delightfully cheesy cover by Tim Hildebrandt lol).

(also, please note, there is no indication here that this is the first book of a series. just..... keep that in mind.)

haha, what if 🤭 ..... i was beautiful princess, and you were a dangerously charming dragon 😜 ..... and we were both girls? 😳💦 

good god, little me LIVED for this book. i checked it out & reread it over and over again- the librarian must have got sick of me at some point but i didn’t care lol. i stayed up too late reading it with a flashlight under the covers, i read it during class beneath the desk (i was not... particularly stealthy. they kinda just let me think i was getting away with it lmao).

i know every young kid likes books with fantasy and magic to make their boring lives less lame, but the way i buried myself in this one was... 100% pure escapism. (pour one out for all the weird kids who had no friends outside of books, am i right ladies?) 

the story has a theme of just..... running away from it all, cause everyone else apparently knows so much more about what’s Right for you- what interests are Right for you, what clothes are Right for you, what boys are Right for you, everything! everything was chosen for you, no dystopian YA lit required! 

(CAN YOU POSSIBLY GUESS WHERE THIS IS GOING?)

i didn’t know what the concept of a lesbian was or why no one else thought it was weird that you couldn’t have interests that were Not Like Other People (the Right People), but that’s what this book meant to me. the entire core of the story was showing kids that you could pick your own hobbies, your own home, your own family & friends and it wasn’t up to the Right People to decide that for you.

fuck ‘em!!! run off to the mountains! live in exciting domestic bliss with a giant, well-read, protective dragon lady who can breathe fire and loves to eat your cherries jubilee every night (ABSOLUTELY NO METAPHORS HERE NO SIR)! back home your family is freaking out (but kinda relieved)- cause this is crazy, dragons are dangerous and ruin the women they steal away (where have i heard this before?), but also your family doesn’t... really miss you. they don’t actually want you back- as you were, anyway. once the prince sweeps you off your feet and away from the dragon’s evil clutches and properly marries you, oh sure, then you’re welcome back with open arms! (but that will never happen.)

fuck ‘em!!!!! make cool friends with other misfits and live a life full of adventure with the family you found along the way! there’s witches who live in eccentric homes with 50 cats, there’s neighborly old dragon grandpas who love chocolate pudding, there’s other girls who don’t think you’re weird and like to hang out and read magic books in the library too! you can make friends and be happy! it IS possible!

and that meant so much to me as a kid. i never fit in (i wonder why), i never seemed to like the Right stuff (I WONDER WHY), and for the things i did care about, i went about it wrong- according to the Right People, who didn’t much care about what i thought at all.

...anyway Dealing With Dragons is an allegory about the power of lesbian escapism & independence and i love it very much. i still love it, over a decade later. it’s a fun, captivating, whimsical little tale that means more than childhood nostalgia to me. i spent hours daydreaming about the story in elementary school, content with the characters and setting in a way that just... settled something in me. 

but then i read the other books.

because there were... OTHER BOOKS!? WHAT??? (again, i never knew it wasn’t a stand-alone story lol).

when i got to middle school and had a whole new library to consume, i naturally looked for my fav type of books- those with cool fantasy ladies with swords and dragons on the front (that’s a genre, right?). and, lo and behold, there were more parts to my favorite story!!! lads, i lost my goddamn mind. there were THREE MORE? WHAT??? utter batshittery. how had they kept this from me? i had to read them immediately. 

what would the stories be about? i saw Cimorene on the covers, sword-wielding and pants-wearing (’fuck yes’, said little me). what adventures would she get up to with Kazul, now that she was king of dragons? what would life in their new home be like? the new libraries and treasuries and kitchens would be massive- what secrets would they discover? what was living in dragon society like, now that they sat at the top together? what new recipes would Cimorene cook with her friend??? (that one was very important to me lol).

i checked out all of ‘em at once, and channeled deep into the obsessive focus that only a truly lonely middle school girl can attain. I was SO EXCITED for this. 

-- and got my heart ground to dust under Patricia C. Wrede’s heel.

...because, see, i hadn’t known there was an Enchanted Forest Chronicles. i hadn’t thought about what that actually meant. it, as inevitably as the tides, meant the incoming of the one thing that made me truly hate reading sometimes- romance. cause these books weren’t about Cimorene and her friends or Kazul at all. they were about a sudden love interest and the child Cimorene had with him cause of course that’s what fucking happened. what else was i expecting? what else could stories possibly be about? i read through all of the books, feeling a little more like somebody shot my dog with each chapter, and could only feel sick when she got married & pregnant at the end. i was 11 years old and i knew something was wrong but not why.

(aaand looking back now, was that baby’s first taste of queerbaiting? does it count if you do it to yourself?? ah, youth. i don’t let myself get my hopes up anymore.)

for a very long time, i hated the idea of love (...quite the oxymoron, that one). cause it always, always meant that the people i cared about changed in ways that i didn’t understand at all. what, some boy you’ve never met before shows up, and suddenly your important quest and friends and family are... an after thought? why? don’t you care about them? don’t you love them too? why does this always happen? why is there always a boy and love and babies and nothing else? (why, why, why indeed? and yes, i was one of those kids who got fucking mean when their friends started only looking at boys, how’d you know?)

anyways. i hated it. i couldn’t possibly have articulated why back then, but it always made me so mad, despite the fact that the words on the page were telling me that this was the best thing that could ever happen in life. that just made it worse, cause why am i getting so upset over this? it’s a good thing, objectively- they’re in love. they’re happy. why is it making me feel so fucking angry instead?

this series doesn’t really... deserve any of the repressed vitriol it made me feel, though. Cimorene’s love interest that appeared in book two, Mendanbar, is actually a pretty cool guy! he has an innate, natural connection to his magic forest kingdom. he’s sick of fairy-tale tropes, he has a sweet anti-wizard sword, he’s very kind and brave- and i fucking hated his guts (...lmao, sorry dude).

there’s nothing actually wrong with this series’s romances. the couples care about each other and support each other well. i’m glad for all the kids who got to see some happy romances, i truly am. but god, that wasn’t for me, and it probably wasn’t for the other lonely kids who picked up a book about running away from what the Right People wanted for them either. 

for a series about rejecting what society tells you is the Right thing to want, the characters just... end up wanting that exact same thing anyway. oh, the thought of marrying a man and spending your life with him, baring him heirs until you die, sounds unappealing? so distressing, in fact, you’d literally rather get eaten by dragons? WELL DON’T WORRY, this one particular guy is actually good! of course you’ll fall in love with him! you’ll want to be pregnant forever with his horrible frogspawn! you’ll be happy! 

...what do you mean this is what you were running away from?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

i spent... an inordinate amount of time as a child reading Dealing With Dragons. while i cannot possibly blame the author for my individual experience with their work, which WAS written as a series (the finale was written first, actually! way back in 1985), the fact remains that my interactions with them were... soured. 

in a way that was out of the author’s hands, really, but i just don’t know how to think about this series without that bittersweet hurt in my chest. i cried like, twice, writing this stupid, rambling essay thing, and i don’t actually know how to look past that. i suppose the tried-and-true method of just... rereading the first book and pretending everything’s fine always works lol.

i own a few different versions of these books. there’s a full set i was gifted later in middle school -the nice glossy ones, with Peter De Seve’s lovely cover art! -which i have never once reread. they’re in immaculate shape, really.

i also own an absolutely, completely beat-to-shit paperback copy of the same version i must have read a hundred times as a kid. its cover is creased and peeling, there’s a bunch of weird stains and rips and dogears, and i adore it. i picked it up this year at a used book place, and every time i look at it i can see some small, desperate kid who doesn’t even know they’re lonely but still curls up around that book again and again. 

[psychecoffee]

Reintroduction

I’ve been quite inactive the last year admittedly, and some things have changed, so I feel I should reintroduce myself.

I’m Lonnie, gender is a social construct, and I’m going to be studying Mental Health Nursing at University this September. So I might become a bit of a studyblr to get my adhd ass into gear. Or I might become a bit of a ghost again ;;

I’m currently a rather unproductive writerblr, which in part was not my fault since my iPad decided to hide all my wips for 4 damned months. Seriously I cried when I could redownload my wips again, which my mum found to be quite a funny sight.

My wips are:

Dager, which I feel is like my unruly child which won’t let me concentrate on it when I am in front of my damn iPad or any writing utensil. Within this universe I am writing a sort of prequel currently entitled ‘The Sound’ which is supposed to be a metaphor for the sound of mourning and how grief leaves an echo. I feel that theme is so prevalent within Dager and TS that I have to admit that they have the same feeling, and even if both the main characters have experienced it in different ways, the feel of it is the same. These are my most psychological intensive books, so it’s taking me a bit longer to write them. It is safe to say these are not YA novels, and are at the core crime novels.

Rerum (the Aenir Prophesies) which include three books (including a very important prequel) that scream at me from all ends before I can even begin completing chapter six of the first book!! The first two books focuses on a prominent group of individuals in the mist of a ‘plague’ (referred to as a ‘misery’), and the deep desire to destroy the group who created it. It is full of deceit and secrets, and the small loneliness that draws the group together. The prequel focuses on the Heir of Aenir, whom is glanced upon in the original books, and is based about a decade after them, and deeply focuses on the Heir trying to prove herself capable of her title.

And Death Defies Zir, which is an anthology of stories from the afterlife, and the organisation that helps run it. Honestly half of them are emotionally exasperated or repressed assholes. Green Light is another small wip, based on a sweet lesbian giant of a women going through her first heartbreak, trying to find her footing in the world of medicine while trying to discover her passion in life. Honestly I turn to GL whenever I’m feeling particularly sad or uncertain, which I do feel reflects quite well on the feelings on the POV.

I’ve decided to put ‘Dager’ on hold for a bit, as I feel somewhat inexperienced to truly write Maeve’s and Christians story, with how psychologically rich it is. While I say that I am still writing TS, which by extension means I’m still getting the foundations up for both the novels. They both involve the same killer, however that individual is never the frontline of either novels. Instead both novels focus on the emotional chaos that is left in the wake.

Books I love include: Howls Moving Castle (Sophie and Howls relationship is base line chaotic and I live for it), Jane Eyre (because I’m a simple soul that loves independent women and wild fools like Rochester), Pride and Prejudice- really anything by Jane Auster (its the FOOLS I tell you!!), The Great Gatsby (because be bi and do crime- also I am an absolute mad lad for unreliable narrators), the Lincoln Rhyme books (I never have gotten over how stella Denzel Washington and Jolie were in the movies), and anything by Maria V. Snyder, Trudi Canavan and Cassandra Claire. Seriously I go especially feral if Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study is mentioned because uGH intelligent FOOOOOLS 💕👌🏻

I also play interactive fiction such as: The Wayhaven Chronicles (and it is not an understatement when I say I am a FOOL for them!!), Breach: The Archangel Job (ugh gosh my heart and mind and ugh everything about this game is fantastic and intellectually gratifying), and The Soul Stone War (I am feral for all the characters, I would simply die for them- they’re all so damn loveable and funny, but if anyone simply touched my Mare I would surely deck them).

Random rubbish about me: I’m chaotic good (which explains a lot), I love coffee and herbal tea and hot chocolate, don’t ask me which is my favourite it changes all the time, I love cats an insane amount, I love horror films and binge watching series (currently binging Grey’s Anatomy and Criminal Minds- both for the first time), and I absolutely cannot watch or read anything sad. I’d say I was passive aggressive but I’m too passive to be aggressive haha. I am a simple chaotic creature.

[portraitdelajeunefilleenfeu]

my friend @hedawolf wrote a review of ‘ammonite’ for lesbiapart. and i love it, so i’m sharing it with you.

London Film Festival - AMMONITE

Paleontology is a fascinating science. Looking at it in a poetic way, it is about chipping away at the coarse surface of the most unremarkable stones to reveal the treasures hiding underneath that cold crust. When Ammonite’s heroine Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) first appears on screen, trudging along on a windy beach and excavating massive rocks from a pile of mud with her bare hands, the metaphor being established becomes immediately clear. It’s unfortunate, then, that the film never quite manages to let the romance at its core—what should be its pulsating heart—break free from its cold shell.

Francis Lee’s sophomore feature tells a fictionalized account of real-life Mary Anning, a 19th century paleontologist who spends her days collecting and studying fossils on the shores of Lyme Regis, only for her name and efforts to be erased in the all-male British science circles. It’s a solitary existence, one she shares only with her mother (Gemma Jones), but in which Mary seems to be at her most comfortable. It all changes with the arrival of Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), a fellow scientist who wishes to follow Mary along and learn from her work. He is accompanied on his journey by his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), a fragile, silent figure who, according to Roderick, has been taken over by a “melancholia” that has driven a wedge between them. Charlotte’s sorrow runs much deeper than what her husband cares to acknowledge, and after deeming her unfit to travel, he decides to leave her in Mary’s care, hoping that physical activity and sea air will give him his “bright, funny, clever wife” back. The hardened paleontologist has no interest in coddling Charlotte and the two women’s relationship starts out colder and rougher than the wind battering the shore. However, after Charlotte’s health worsens, Mary finds herself taking care of her and slowly develops a fondness and fascination for the younger girl. In return, Charlotte starts taking interest not only in Mary’s work but in her as a person, too. Their connection builds slowly, across silent gazes and hesitant touches, and eventually something unlocks within them and they cannot help but pour onto each other all the feelings they had repressed for so long.

That Ammonite isn’t as passionate as its premise makes it out to be isn’t necessarily an issue. There is plenty to appreciate in the muted tenderness that marks the building steps of Mary and Charlotte’s relationship, which feels so realistic mainly due to the strength of Winslet and Ronan’s acting; Winslet in particular is incredible in the role. Without uttering a word, she succeeds at conveying the inhibited turmoil of emotions that simmers under Mary’s carapace, and the way she physically reacts to Charlotte touching her for the first time results possibly more heartfelt and erotic than the prolonged sex scene that plays out later on. The problem is that what should be the central dynamic of the film, the love story between Mary and Charlotte, hardly feels central at all. The focus is tightly locked on Mary, on her daily life, the grittiness of her work, the tension between her uncompromising exterior, and her hidden fragility. This makes for the best and most compelling part of Lee’s film, which is aided by a stunning cinematography that complements the tactile nature of Mary’s work and makes the film feel layered and textured through the screen. However, the same care isn’t put in crafting the bond between the two women, and this leaves the narrative feeling unbalanced at the expense of the romance that should be the story’s emotional fuel. What is also misguided is that so much of the movie’s marketing seems to revolve around the talked-about sex scene. While never objectifying despite how explicit it is, it drags along after a point and implements certain choices that seem to want to scream “passion,” but ultimately end up having a distancing effect. It’s also a scene that isn’t all that central to the narrative. Both Winslet and Ronan do incredibly interesting work and it’s a shame to see the more nuanced parts of their performances go understated in favor of discussing the logistics of straight women acting out a lesbian sex scene.

There also seems to be a desire on Lee’s part to move away from the more clichéd elements that often mark narratives of homosexuality in period dramas, like the rejection of feelings considered wrong for the time, the fear of being discovered, or the eventual tragic ending. However, for every stereotype the film tries to defy, others are reinforced, namely in the depiction of femininity and the lack of subtlety with which the patriarchal constraints of the Victorian society are hammered home, and the final result ends up being probably more conventional than what it was aiming for. Ammonite is well intended. It works best in its quiet moments of character exploration, and Winslet’s performance is deserving of all the praise received so far. It is still an impressive second feature, delicate and finely crafted. Its biggest flaw though, with a couple exceptions, is that it doesn’t move the heart.

anyway, if you liked this, and/or you like @hedawolf’s fanfic and her writing, in general, go tell her, ok?

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Sixteen : THE QUEER KING RECOMMENDS

The Queer King recommends THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (2017) No one knows what really happened to activist and trans pioneer Marsha P. Johnson the night she died. People still trying to understand. Why do you need to see it ? Marsha P. Johnson is an icon and learning about her is learning about Stonewall and our culture.

The Queer King recommends FAGGOTS, Larry Kramer (1978) Fred Lemish, looking for love, gravitates in a New York City full of glory holes, BDSM, orgies and becomes disillusioned along the way. Why do you need to read it ? It’s Kramer’s first novel. It’s ruff. His writing doesn’t shy away from the reality of gay life and he does not take any prisoners alive. A must read.

The Queer King recommends TANGERINE, Sean Baker (2015) On Christmas Eve, Sin-Dee discovers her pimp boyfriend has been cheating on her. With her friend Alexandra, she goes searching for him Why do you need to see it ? Shot on an IPhone for a ridiculous amount of money, this dramedy puts trans women up front with incredible narrative audacity.

The Queer King recommends A LITTLE LIFE, Hanya Yanagihara (2015) Jude, Willem, JB & Malcolm are best friends living in New York City. From college to middle-age, with most focus on Jude, you will learn to care for them like no other fictional characters before. Why do you need to read it ? I can’t stress this enough. This novel is extraordinary. 18 months later, I’m still not over it. It will break your heart.

The Queer King Recommends PLEASE LIKE ME, Josh Thomas (2013–2016) Josh discovers he’s gay, putting a spin in the lives of his girlfriend, his lazy best friend, his newly-wed dad and his depressed mother. Why do you need to see it ? This Australian comedy achieves in tone and heart what Looking never could. And also, there’s Arnold. Oh, Arnold.

The Queer King Recommends HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, John Cameron Mitchell (2001) Hedwig, an East German gender queer rock singer, is waiting for her operation that will get rid of the one-inch mound of flesh between her legs. Why do you need to see it ? Poignant, full of incredible tunes and an extraordinary performance from writer-director JCM. Sugar Daddy, Bring it Home.

The Queer King Recommends THE PRINCE OF SALT/CAROL, Patricia Highsmith (1952) Young Therese meets Carol, an rich older woman. The “friendship” that will follow will change her life forever. Why do you need to read it ? An unprecedented feat in literature, a lesbian love story in which the protagonists are not punished in the end. The movie adaptation by Todd Haynes is also a must-see.

The Queer King Recommends 120 BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE, Robin Campillo (2017) France, 1990s. Act Up. The AIDS Epidemic. Love. Revolution. Why do you need to see it ? To remember what happened. It’s earth-shattering. Silence = Death. What are you waiting for ? Go see it, now !

The Queer King Recommends ONE DAY AT A TIME (2017–2019) A family of hispanic descent tries to survive in today’s America. Why do you need to see it ? For the greatest coming-out storyline on television. So perfect. Bring the show back!

The Queer King Recommends GIOVANNI’S ROOM, James Baldwin (1956) David, a young american who lived in Paris, remembers his complex relationships with the men in his life, particularly a bartender named Giovanni. Why do you need to read it ? Top-3 greatest gay novel of all-time. The first time I read it, I couldn’t finish it. I read the last 30 pages 4 years later. It’s THAT powerful.

The Queer King Recommends A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL , Stephen Frears. (2018) Three-part miniseries about the Jeremy Thorpe Scandal. Why do you need to see it ? Three words. Whishaw. Davies. Frears. Funny as fuck. I’m starting a Ben Whishaw fanclub BTW.

The Queer King recommends THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, Stephan Elliott (1994) Three drag queens take a road trip across Australia to get to a paid-job. Why do you need to see it ? One of the rare 90s positive representation of LGBT+ people, it’s funny, gorgeous looking. A classic. PS The soundtrack is IN-CRE-DI-BLE.

The Queer King recommends JUST KIDS, Patti Smith (2010) The chronicles of a love story beyond societal restrictions between Patti Smith and revolutionary artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Why do you need to read it ? Aside from the historical accuracy of the 60/70s, you explore what it feels like to really love someone. And Mapplethorpe is a fascinating man. I cried multiple times.

The Queer King recommends THE X PORTOFLIO , Robert Mapplethorpe (1978) A series of photographs that shade a light on homosexual practices (most of them extremes). Why do you need to see it ? A lot of Mapplethorpe’s work is great, but this is beyond. Not for the sensible soul. Hardcore.

The Queer King recommends SHORTBUS, John Cameron Mitchell (2006) An extremely diverse group of people are desperately trying to connect in a vibrant New York City. Why do you need to see it ? That little miracle isn’t shy about sex. ALL kinds of sex. It’s very much like a Robert Altman movie, if Robert Altman shot a lot of oral sex in his career.

The Queer King recommends LESS, Andrew Sean Greer (2018) As his 50th birthday is coming up, writer Andrew Less is traveling around the world to avoid going to his ex’s wedding. Why do you need to read it ? For the exploration of a gay man’s psyché while his youth and opportunities are behind him. As a gay man, it made me sad. Then it gave me hope. Also now, I want a blue suit.

The Queer King recommends CLOSET MONSTER, Stephen Dunn (2015) 18-year old Oscar tries to figure out his sexuality and face his childhood demons Why do you need to see it ? The Buffy references and great acting. Duh.

The Queer King recommends THE WAY HE LOOKS, Daniel Ribeiro (2014) Blind high school student Leo meets new classmate Gabriel. He starts developing romantic feelings towards him. Why do you need to see it ? Desires and self-realization are themes very well exploited in this movie. The two main actors are phenomenal. I almost wished I was 16 again (but not really).

The Queer King recommends WHEN WE RISE, Cleve Jones (2016) A complete memoir about the journey of activist Cleve Jones, following into the path of Harvey Milk to keep fighting for LGBTQ+ rights and against the AIDS Epidemic. Why do you need to read it ? An in depth look at life at the fore front of activism, with gorgeous interludes of romance, sex and heartbreaks.

The Queer King recommends KILLING EVE, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (2018-present) MI:5 Eve Polastri’s pursuit of International killer Villanelle. Why do you need to see it ? Because lesbian desires are still mostly unseen on mainstream, award-winning programs. It’s very, very, very good.

The Queer King recommends ZIGGY, STARDUST & ME, James Brandon (2019) 1973. Jonathan meets Web. He’s not supposed to. He needs to change. Sweet Ziggy won’t help him now. Why do you need to read it ? It’s not out until August (but I have a proof copy). It’s not great literature (it’s YA after all) but it did fill my heart with feelings of love and hope. Everything Bowie is good for the soul anyway.

The Queer King recommends PRIDE, Stephen Boresford (2014) 1984, Brittain. A strike is breaking the country apart. Lesbians & Gays decide to give their support to the miners. Why do you need to see it ? Because it’s still rare to see a funny movie about gay people which is not condescending.

The Queer King recommends ANGELS IN AMERICA, Tony Kushner (1991–1993) A complex, metaphorical examination of American life, the AIDS epidemic and homosexuality in the 80s. Why do you need to read it ? The writing is glorious, full with incredible characters. A very sensitive approach of flaws in the human spirit. It’s epic.

The Queer King recommends LE ROSE ET LE NOIR , Frédéric Martel (1996) Everything that happened to the Queer community in France from 1968 until the arrival of the PACS. Why do you need to read it ? Information is key. You won’t get a deeper source of information.

The Queer King recommends LILTING, Hong Khaou (2014) A mother tries to understand who her son was after his death, co-existing with his grieving lover. Why do you need to see it ? A story of death, acceptance and race, Lilting is a delicate piece of filmmaking. And again, Ben Whishaw. Goddamn Ben Whishaw.

The Queer King recommends MOONLIGHT, Barry Jenkins (2016) The youth, teenage years and adult life of a black gay man struggling with his identity. Why do you need to see it ? Black gay men are not a common subject. It won Best Picture at the Oscars. Fucking Amazing.

The Queer King recommends POSE (2018-present) The tribulations of gay and transgender characters in the ball scene of the late 80s. Why do you need to see it ? The first of its kind — where representation is limitless, it’s an homage to a fabulous and terrible time in LGBTQ+’s life. As I said in a previous article, it’s essential.

[silver-leaf-girl]

so I read Record of a Spaceborn Few

so, I just finished the audiobook of Becky Chambers Record of Spaceborn Few last night, and haha do I have some feelings. it is a beautiful, and lovely book?

mild spoilers, and initial review-y thoughts below?

I think a lot of my friends will be familiar with Becky Chambers’ stuff, but for context (since context is such a theme in this book) - they’re queer-positive, fairly soft sci fi, focusing on the relationships (shipmates, romantic, rivalries, friendships) between individuals in the world, rather than colossal Events of Galactic Significance (esp. compared to stuff like Ann Leckie, who I also like a lot). they’re also focused on humans (and their creations, <3 Lovelace in Book 2) as a kind of marginal and hardscrabble recently discovered species that’s not up to much, rather than casting us as the kind of ‘Humanity F- Yeah!‘/humans are special/have a unique manifest destiny that a fair amount of other sci fi does (a lot of people compare Chambers with the Mass Effect universe, which I genuinely don’t like because of this).

RoSF is very much in the tradition of this kind of small-scale ‘cosy’ sci-fi, dealing with the Exodan Fleet and its inhabitants who fled an environmentally devastated Earth, and who are under the three strains of the loss of one of their Generation Ships to metal fatigue, the visit of a well-meaning but intrusive alien anthropologist (whose broadcasts back home to her wealthy alien planet are really well-captured), and the issue of emigration/immigration/decline (?) of the Fleet. It follows a variety of plot lines - a fleet archivist, a recent immigrant, a restless teen guy, a caretaker (a kind of priest/funerary worker, really interesting), and a harried mum who’s considering leaving the fleet. It really inhabits their everyday lives and concerns; it indirectly tells a bigger story about uncertain cultural identity, but is focused on these small intimate stories.

The big through-line in the book is a sense of community, shared history, and what we owe to the past. The ships of the Exodan Fleet are maintained and patched together from their own scraps; people carry on identities, meanings and (as is discussed in one rather haunting bit towards the end) even bodies and ways of living as relics from a planet they will never set foot on; and (a really key theme) the nutrients of the bodies of the dead are recycled in a really emotive and heartfelt funereal ritual. How different people struggle with the past - rejecting it, chafing against it, seeking it out to fill holes in themselves, finding meaning in it, preserving it, making it - is so key throughout the book, both in the fiction, in the language, and the structure (bookended by two naming ceremonies, using a form of words that is so beautiful I feel I have to put it in a reblog), and it puts together a beautiful picture of a changing society where people are trying to preserve the values they built it on. The notion of recognising the fleet/the fleet you grew up in - is really powerful, and honestly a bit heart-in-throat.

But the notion of keeping shared history for its own sake isn’t enough - what’s worth preserving? Politically, it’s v. interesting too - there’s quite a lot of (well-blended-in) exposition and description of how the Fleet operates, and it’s ... well, if not Post Scarcity Fully Automated Luxury Gay Pacifist Space Communism, then at least Low Scarcity Labour-Egalitarian Lib Fem Space Anarcho-Socialism. The way that humans live and coexist alongside each other - where people come together, and where the faultlines between them are - is really well-illustrated without becoming didactic, and the idea of the fleet as this utopian, half-realised, desperate-but-now-slightly adrift project is really beautiful and well-evoked. The book is hopeful and convincing about the liberatory potential of this project (there’s a beautiful bit towards the end about even people leaving the fleet still being part of it and embodying what it values and means, but is ultimately clear-eyed about the fact that it’s the marginalised, minority part of a species that is nothing special on the galactic field and is surrounded by wealthy and powerful neighbours. It’s clear about the lingering crud of human social structures, about being undercut by intense, tragic disaster, by unequal external trade and internal corruption, and about the dubious appeals of the austere space-borne (and spaceborn) life compared to what the capitalist world beyond offers - but it’s hopeful nonetheless that people can make something of it, and that the fleet can carry on.

In terms of ~queer content~, it’s not quite as rich a vein as some of the previous books (first one had a lot more queer aliens and relationship structures, second had an incredibly strong trans metaphor as a through-line with an AI working out embodiment), but it’s got a lot of stuff that works with this too? Isabel, one of the main characters, is in a beautifully described and lovely wlw relationship, and her date with her wife where they’re remembering how they met is one of the most lovely bits of the book? Sometimes it’s OK not to have difficult queer feelings be an important part of the book. Sometimes just happy elderly lesbians is all you want/need! There’s also some interesting stuff with Sunny - a sex worker - and his relationship with Eyas, a funerary worker/caretaker - about the concept of ‘caring for bodies’, and the emotional labour that goes into that?

In terms of writing, it’s beautiful and lovely, just as much a warm hug and cup of hot chocolate as any of the other books in the series - it’s not super-lyrical or evocative in its use of language, but that’s not the point - it’s heartfelt and evokes real, flawed-but-good people in messy but fixable situations. The narration by Patricia Rodriguez on the audiobook version that I listened to is fantastic - I particularly like the way that she subtly changes language and accent on the different viewpoint characters to evoke the way different cultural perspectives and denaturalising the protagonists’ narrative voice.

So yes - it’s a small, beautiful, character-focused book with an extremely evocative sense of community and history. I cried a few times listening to it.

I’d definitely recommend it - probably on its own, but ideally in the context of the other two books before it, to flesh and round out the world(s) it evokes.

[sapphicbookclub]

Author Spotlight - Erin Jones

Today I’m excited to spotlight Erin Jones, the author of Truth Weekend. Check out her post for some great writing tips which I’m sure you’ll find useful!

Guest Post by Erin Jones: How To Write The Gayest Story In Your Heart

Though I would not recommend 2016 to my worst enemy (okay maybe one) it’s the year I hunkered down on my writing regime and in January 2017 I published my first novella, or novelette according to the ol’ Google, Truth Weekend! With equal parts sass, gay, and angst, Truth Weekend is a novelette told in vignettes about two rival women who escape for a weekend to make a college short film under the condition of sharing every secret, insecurity, and dark thought they’ve ever had. In a tale of sexuality, destruction, and truth, Skye and Rosemary discover what happens when you expose the darkest parts of yourself.

So to usher in 2018, The Year of The Queer, I wanted to break down how to write the gayest story possible in just three easy steps. Let’s go!

STEP 1: Throw out the idea that your story has to be groundbreaking, to warrant being written

So often, marginalized groups and communities are told that the only stories of ours worth telling are of the ones that paved the way. The rule breakers, the heroes, the ones that risked their lives. I appreciate those stories and they should be treated with the utmost respect and importance, but we need more. You don’t have to tell the story of the best gay that ever lived. The weight of the entire lgbt community is not solely on you.

Think about little lesbian Linda with green hair who makes pottery in her basement and is not very good at wizarding. Her story is significant if you want it to be. Bring Linda over here with her crusty clay hands and her horrendous form when slinging that wand around. She cute.

In a nutshell, dare to be horrible. Your first draft is going to be cringey, but that is what rewriting and editing is for. Sit down today, even if it’s only for thirty minutes, and write what’s true and ugly and everything that you’ve always wanted to say. Everything you’ve been scared to think. Everything you wish you could read. Its starts here.

STEP 2: Relish in queer intimacy

Oh no, this hotel room only has one bed! Gee I guess we should share it. And cuddle. AND confess our undying love.

In this gay and age, I for one am sick of subtext and our love being portrayed as merely pornographic or something that we’ll grow out of. I know, writing is a daunting task in and of itself with built in pressures and stigmas, so adding gay characters or themes may seem like even more of an anxiety parade, but I promise you there is someone who needs to get lost in your story and grand escapism is a marvelous coping mechanism.

Here’s another writing exercise: What is gay culture? Can you describe it? Give me a few examples or moments.

Last week I was riding in the car with my friend who is also bisexual and it was so nice to just cut to the chase about our feelings as two bi women. We expressed things that we may have moderated with our friends or people who aren’t bi so we don’t enforce a stereotype, because we’re constantly afraid we’re giving people the “wrong idea” about bisexuality. Then race came up and boy howdy did I have a lot to say about being black and bisexual.

See, it’s little scenes like this that I want to see in the world. You don’t have to hit your audience over the head with it. Or you can if you want to and your whole novel could take place in Pridelandia. It’s your book, dude.

Fear is going to creep in about seven times a day during the writing process and it can’t be stopped. You just have to unabashedly write the story you have in your heart no matter how vanilla or kinky. Normalization is a powerful thing.  

Wax poetic about the adorable guy at the library with wire frame glasses and obscene hands. Write about how your character can’t tell if her crush is a lesbian or just a hipster. Have an entire internal monologue or external soliloquy at a public pool about how you can’t tell if this person is flirting with you or it’s just in your head. What about a group of gay friends that have no desire to date each other? What about collecting an lgbt rainbow in the group? Or the mysterious case of someone in the friend group coming out every six months, because without even realizing it, we all seem to clump together. Just check my friend circle. It happens!

STEP 3: Be the gay you want to see in the world

If you’ve always wanted to read a story about XYZ, then write it! When you get the courage to tell people about your awesome story, there’s going to be that ass-basket that smiles and goes “Oh so it’s basically [insert popular book or movie here].” Ignore them. It’s not like that story because no one can tell your story like you. Everything on the page goes through your filter and is colored by your life experiences.

You’re not naïve if you want to write cute fluffy stories or an ideal. Not all lgbt lit has to be gritty or sad to be “realistic” or well written. It’s beyond okay if you write characters that just happen to be gay and have conflicts and successes that have nothing to do with their sexual orientation. Write about old gays, deaf gays, gays in wonderland, gays who stick their ankles in cabinets for science.

Here’s my favorite writing exercise for getting ideas in the page: Take the time to compile a list of all the things (gay and otherwise) that you love in a story visually, emotionally, and character wise.

If someone said “hey this book has xyz,” what are the things you would throw down good money to see in one place? This list could also be themes you would like to explore like: obsession, the loss of innocence, grief, preservation of youth, loneliness, the desire to escape, self-sabotage, ect. Whatever you’re interested in delving into and ripping apart.

I’ve always had a guilty pleasure for those wild teen movies where all the girls have kool-aid dyed hair and are out of their minds: stealing their weight in booze, self-piercing their everythings, burning money, and mixing Viagra with cocaine that they’ll snort at prom. But I’ve always wondered what happened to that girl and what happened to the artistic popular chick that was always at her neck with insults that’ll stick with you for the rest of your life. Thus, Truth Weekend (the novella and now the screenplay!) became the deconstruction and exploration of these strong personalities and all the complexities of your early 20s when there’s this societal push to be wise beyond our years, but also to be the ingénue. Through this I got to delve into the paranoia driven notion that you have to achieve everything right now or else you’re an unproductive failure and if you accomplish all that you’ve worked for at a later age it’s no longer as special.

To sum it up, just go balls to the wall. Throw your metaphorical word balls to the nearest wall. Or the farthest wall. And slowly work this list into your story. If you want to see it on the shelf or on the screen you have to sit down today and write.

Those are all my tips! I hope this helped or at least made you laugh. You can check out Truth Weekend here and follow my progress in writing the screenplay adaptation on my YouTube channel where I also post sketches and other writing videos.  My writing tumblr is @erinthewriter and my regular tumblr is @feelsandmermaids.

Happy Holidays, now go write!

[eruwaedhiel-iso]

How Korrasami Saved Me

I read the initiative for sharing personal stories or experiences of the way Korrasami, well, saved us, when I was scrolling through @threehoursfromtroy‘s Tumblr. Really, thanks to everyone involved in this initiative.

Well, here’s my story, my experience, because, no kidding, Korrasami/Korra/Asami/the entire Avatar universe truly saved me and the impact this animated series in particular has had in my life is beyond any words I could find. But at least I’ll try...

I watched The Legend of Korra’s series finale long after it aired on December 19, 2014. I was familiar with the Avatar universe since I watched The Last Airbender when it aired on Nick and I liked it but I must confess I was never a big fangirl. That’s why I didn’t know anything about Korra when it aired. All my knowledge of Korra was because my brother kinda watched it sometimes and because of Tumblr post here and there.

That December 19 I was like a distant observer in a moment that meant so much for so many people and that, in many ways, paved the way for a better representation in kid’s shows.

The Avatar series always dealt with different issues: disability, mental health, politics, dysfunctional families... the human condition. There’s no denying that it’s a groundbreaking series. But the issue of sexual orientation was always out of the table. After all, it was a cartoon, airing in a kid’s channel and even though it always dealt with complex and mature issues, there was no possible way that the writers and creators could go that way, no matter how much the fandom shipped certain characters. The possibility of those ships becoming canon was slim.

I think that’s why something changed for so many people thanks to Korra and Asami becoming canon after holding hands, facing each other while entering that new spirit portal in the middle of Republic City. I could use a thousand metaphors of what that particular moment meant but all of them seem so small compared with the reality. At last, someone dared to break with the usual writing, the usual storytelling... just that, breaking the usual and give a lot of people something to identify with.

I thinks that’s what it means for me: an identity. What the journey of Korra and Asami mean for me was the way I finally acknowledged myself and what I am.

For many years, I navigated the waters of heteronormativity. I thought that recognizing that some women were good looking was because of the permissibility that society sometimes allows women to think other women are attractive, or kiss each other on the cheek, or have sleep overs without other people thinking they are necessarily lesbians or bisexuals or pansexuals, etc.

Boy, how wrong I was. Now I identify myself as a proud bisexual and finding the courage to accept it, in many ways, was thanks to The Legend of Korra.

After binge watching the entire series in less than three days and fangirling (very lately) about Korrasami, one thing stayed with me: I recognized many of my traits both in Korra and in Asami. I recognized myself in Korra because of her impulsiveness and her vulnerability. In her insecurities, in her self-doubt but also in her strength. In her loyalty and sometimes in how much of a dork she is. Particularly, in that feeling of being “too much”: too intense, too much to handle, too sensitive, too emotional, too intense, too wild. But also, I recognized myself in Asami, in the way she always tried to help others at her own expense. In the fact that both of them were driven by kindness and generosity... they were both so selfless. They became, instantly, an inspiration.

When the two of them became canon, I also recognized myself as what they were: bisexuals. The confirmation of Bryke only ended up echoing in the bottom of my heart. For me, it was like finding the perfect answer to a question that had been lurking in the back of my mind all my life, a question I never truly dared to acknowledge. I was afraid. I was confused. I never thought the possibility of someone being bisexual could exist.

Growing up, everything was confusing. I was never the perfect example of what a girl “should” be. I was never fond of dolls and other “girl toys”. I was never fond of dresses. I loved playing football with boys and playing with Batman action figures, Hot-Wheels and other “boy toys”. I loved wearing over-sized boy’s shirts. My mom always scolded me because I loved getting in trouble and being dirty for playing too much outside, in the mud or climbing trees, getting my knees scraped. I used to play imaginary wrestling matches with my brother and I always ended up bleeding somehow. When puberty knocked the door, I was never a fan of make-up or nail polish, tight clothes or other things that are considered “girly”. That’s why I identified myself with Korra as well. But also with Asami, because I realized that I could be another kind of “girly”. I could like “boyish” things and that didn’t necessarily made me less of a girl.

One time, in Middle School, a boy told me I was a “lesbian” because I was holding one of my friends and she kissed me on the cheek, because I loved playing football during recesses (I know, I was like a walking stereotype). That was the first time I heard that word and I didn’t know what it meant since I grew in a rather traditional family. My parents are both Catholic and though they always taught my brother and me to be respectful towards others, the words “homosexual”, “gay”, “lesbian” (”bisexual” was never a word I heard when I was growing up) and everything they entailed, were like a taboo. After all, Mexican society is very traditional, Catholic, prejudiced, narrow-minded and, sadly, very discriminating. 

Growing up, I always accepted the fact that I liked boys but at the same time, I never recognized that I felt the same towards girls. I never knew how to call that. So I kept quiet about it.

I must say that the Internet was like a safe space, it helped me research about what I was feeling, what I always felt but I was never truly able to name it, to identify it. One of my best friends also helped me and I must say that I don’t know how I am going to ever repay him for just listening, hours and hours of just sitting there and listen. I also saw celebrities like Evan Rachel Wood being very vocal about being bisexual. That’s why, because of my best friend, because of what I found on the Internet, because of Evan Rachel Wood... because of Korra and Asami, watching and reading about these two characters being bisexual, meant so much for me. I finally discovered the word bisexual, and I discovered it and saw it in a positive way.

I saw a couple of characters whom I identified with rather deeply, having a happy ending together and for the first time in my life I was sure of who I was, of how I wanted to live my life. It was like a reassurance. Korra and Asami became that, along with everything else. They were a fundamental part of my process, of the way to truly find myself. And it must seem corny and ridiculous, but honestly, representation truly matters. And even if some people STILL deny the fact that Korrasami is real and it’s canon, they can’t deny the fact that they mean so much for so many people out there, people like me, people like you, that see themselves in both of them, that see some meaning in these characters, some purpose, something that speaks to them.

Since then, both Korra and Asami (and the entire Avatar universe, really) have become a refuge, a balm, a salvation.

I’m not going to tell you my sad and rather pathetic relationship record, because, well, it really is sad and pathetic. But last year, when I hit rock bottom after a very bad break-up that left me questioning myself and everything I am, I remembered the words Aang tells Korra when she loses her abilities in the season one finale: “When we hit out lowest point were are open to the greatest change”.

I’ve been dealing with that, not as successfully as I wish, but when in doubt, when I find myself wanting to end everything, when I think my life sucks, I remember these words, I remember everything this series and its characters mean for me and I dare to try again. I dare to stand up once again and be better.

So, yeah, thank you, Korra and Asami, thank you Avatar universe, thank you Bryke, for saving me.

[cagedbycravings]

@atarostarling is another fantastic writer I’ve discovered. She was one of the first enchantresses I reached out to when I entered the fandom and my word, I can’t get enough of seeing her on my dash. That said, I am shamefully behind on her wonderful fic The Draconian. I will catch up! In the meanwhile I wanted to share my favorite lines from each of the chapters I have read.

Warnings: Spoilers, Implied Sexual Situations, Cursing

   Chapter One

 A low, threatening growl from behind caused them to pivot. The Bodyguard, Gladiolus, summoned his Greatsword while the Strategist, Ignis, called forth his daggers. The two of them placed themselves in front of their Prince, Noctis, the future King of Lucis. It was their lifelong duty to serve and protect the heir to the throne, but throughout their years in service their instinct to shield Noctis was rooted in the brotherhood they shared. They faced the origin of the menacing sound, who turned out to be the Sharpshooter, Prompto. His wide eyed look of confusion soon replaced with a sheepish grin as he placed a hand on his stomach and let out a nervous laugh…

Her eyes were darting everywhere, which is when he concluded that she was evidently frightened. He could see it in her breathing, her fists trembled ever so slightly as she struggled to keep them raised - exhaustion written all over her physique. Finally, in all the commotion, her eyes found his and she froze, lips parting slightly, the fire in her eyes extinguishing immediately. The need to gaze upon him for hours to take him all in started to take over her being; her knees began to weaken in the presence of this man. All these thoughts racing through her mind meant her fists lowered slightly, however almost immediately she shook her head ever so slightly, as if snapping herself out of the reverie, and her fists came back up to her face as she prepared to move forward. 

 One of the strongest opening scenes I’ve read. The introduction of each character was vivid and intense. The picturesque description was in my opinion far better than the intro in the video game or movie. I felt a more compelling connection with the writing as Ataro drew me to the edge of my chair only to relax in laughter.

 Chapter Two:

A short while later, the five of them sit around the fire, eating, casually discussing the days events and the monster they faced before encountering ___ . Meanwhile, ___ is focused completely on her food, eating it with an almost monstrous intention. When she had spooned the final grain of rice into her mouth she looked up to find the four men staring at her in shock. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself. Much better than trying to act sheepish around them, she thought. “I’ll take any leftovers, boys!” Noctis was the first to crack into a chuckle, before the rest of them let out laughter in disbelief. 

My biggest hesitation with reading self inserts is that I hadn’t found any that were written with personality. And while I understand a blank slate is intended, as far as fiction goes, I feel that each character needs to share something with the reader to make them hopeful and enticed. Ataro nails that as I grew to see the insert as more than just a slate but rather an actual person who I could meet and befriend.

 Chapter Three:

“I’ve had romances with women, though I wouldn’t call myself a lesbian, if I feel an attraction it doesn’t matter what they have between their legs.” Gladio coughed to try and cover up the grin that was plastered on his face while the younger of the companions stuttered over their response to her answer.”

Loved the subtle nod to not being completely straight. Whether the insert is Bisexual, Pansexual or one who doesn’t adhere to labels, I appreciated how this was so artfully added. Gladio’s reaction is also realistic in my opinion as the reader isn’t abashed to speak up about a subject still considered taboo. All around one of my favorite moments in this chapter.

 Chapter Four:

“It’s a date.” She replied. Nailed it.

He shook his head and turned, Prompto’s eyes lit up as he ran in front of Ignis and took a picture of him. Prompto dashed over to ___ and showed her the image he had just taken. She tried to contain her gasp as she saw Ignis’ coy smile on the preview screen.

Another element I appreciate about her writing, is the delicate foreshadowing of what’s to come. Her writing is so precise and graceful that I just can’t help but feel enthralled.

 Chapter Five

As the men began to trickle into their tent to sleep she remained by the fire, staring into the embers. It was only the sound of the tent flap unzipping that broke her from her thoughts, which is when she realised she had been sat out there most of the night. The figure emerged from the tent, then turned to zip the door back. It was Ignis, dressed in grey sweat pants and a form fitting white undershirt…

 Ignis was pacing around her as he spoke, though he never took his eyes off her. Angry tears were now forming in ___’s eyes, though she was trying her best to keep them at bay. “Unless that is of course you’re not from a small town.” He approached her menacingly and stood in front of her so he was looking down on her. His broad chest seemed to eclipse everything in her peripheral vision. “You work for the Empire, don’t you?”

Out of all the chapters I’ve read thus far, this is one of my favorite scenes. The image of Ignis pacing like a hawk zeroing in on its prey is a powerful metaphor for his abilities. This is the strategist’s ultimate strength. Intensity. Intimidation. Interrogation.

 Chapter Six

“Is that what you see me as? Some girl?”

From the first moment it was said, I could feel a rush of warmth between my legs. This line oozes sexual tension no matter how many times I read it.

The thought dawned on him that the others would rouse in their sleep because of the noise they were making, but it only made him want to pleasure her more intensely so they could watch him satisfy her. Ignis remembered that Gladiolus and Prompto flirted with her occasionally; he wanted them to see that ___ was now his. Their eyes locked and his heart raced, a wave of longing crashed over him. He wanted to kiss her, touch her, fuck her, love her like no one else ever had and ever will. He ran a hand down her torso, his thumb found her pleasure point and he began to rub it rhythmically with his thrusts. She breathed an obscenity as he pushed in and out of her faster, applying more pressure under his thumb. ___’s breathing soon became screams of pleasure, Ignis watched her climax, her face glowing with pleasure, then he gripped her hips again and began pushing and pulling her entire body around him so that he could cum inside her soon. “Oh yes, Ignis, yes!” He was so close, so close to finally feeling his orgasm release inside of her. So close…

His eyes fluttered open. The roof of the tent stared back at him, not ___’s glowing, almost naked body. He heard the sounds of the others sleeping next to him, before becoming painfully aware of the erection he had. He looked down and saw it tenting the covers. Quickly he got up and left the tent in case the others saw him. When he was outside, Ignis contemplated dealing with it, but he glanced at the spot where ___ would have slept and arrived at the decision he didn’t deserve the release. He simply waited until his arousal had subsided, then made his way over to stand in ___’s spot to look out into the night. Some nights he swore he could see her in the distance, walking towards him. He had almost ran towards her image at full speed, ready to hold her and not let her go, but it was always an illusion. He was always standing alone when the sun broke on the horizon.  

This scintillating scene is truly one of the best pieces I’ve read. The restraint Ignis places on his yearning leaves me soaked each time.

 Chapter Seven

“The very same! Weird, huh?” ___ replied.

“So…you’re a hooker now?” Noctis inquired.

“What?! No! I’m a waitress!”

“Uh…huh.” Prompto skeptically said.

“Really, I am! I just wear that wig to try and blend in a little. It’s also so that people don’t recognize me as much when I leave.”

“Anyway…you got a job as hooker…continue.” Noctis joked.

The banter in this story always makes me so happy. I cherish how close this reminds me of brothers and sister tease at each other.

Chapter Eight

“Noctis and Prompto were sat on a couch, phones in their hands pretending that their attention was not on Gladio and Ignis. Noctis had never seen Gladio be so forward with Ignis, this seemed like forbidden territory for the years they’ve all known one another. Prompto messaged Noctis: “Shots fired!” and Noctis tried his best not to smirk.”

Each time I read this all I can think is Meme’s in my Final Fantasy! Why I never! But in all seriousness, the dialogue in this story is out of this world. For this and the striking scene below, I’m constantly hearing the voices from this story echo in the walls of my mind.

“___?? Wait…is Freya even your real name?” Reeve asked, his voice growing hysterical.

“No, Reeve. Freya was my name at the Galbadia. ___ is my real name.”

“So you’ve been lying to me this whole time?!”

“Come on now, it’s just a name. Remember the time we’ve spent together, Reeve. We’ve laughed together, cried together…you told me all about your family.”

“That’s why I have to do this, Fre…___…whatever!” Reeve’s panic was rising with each stutter. “K-Kuja told us if we could bring in the Prince and his friends we could see our families again.”

“Kuja was lying to you, Reeve. He won’t let you go. He’s using you. He’s in the Galbadia right now with Adel after telling you all he’d punish any of you if he caught you in there. Don’t let him get to you, let me help you.”

Reeve held onto his gun, trembling. ___ held her arms up, but she was inches away from the barrel of the gun now. 

“I need to see my family.” Reeve sobbed.

Suddenly, ___ grabbed Reeve’s wrist and pushed it the side, then punched him in the jaw and snatched the gun from his hands and pointed it at him as he stumbled back.

“I’m sorry, Reeve, I didn’t want to hurt you. But I can’t let you make this mistake, ok?”

His anguish quickly turned to anger. “You bitch, I’ll call for backup, you’ll never get out of here alive!” 

“There’s no need for that, it’s not too late.” ___ took apart the gun and threw the mechanisms on the ground. “I’m not going to hurt you. Let me help you. I promise you, you can see your family again if you just let us leave.”

Reeve stood trembling, sweat beading down his forehead. “I want to see them again, Freya. I’ve gotta do this.” He reached his hand swiftly into his pocket and pulled out a radio.

“P!” ___ yelled.

Immediately Prompto shot the radio out of Reeve’s hands, who stared at his bleeding hand and glared at ___ before lunging towards her and wrapping his other hand around her throat. Before ___  could react, she saw a flash of silver and then saw Reeve’s horrified expression. His grip loosened on her throat enough for her concentrate but her breathing was still restricted. Ignis was stood at their side, his dagger pressed against Reeve’s throat.

“Release her.” Ignis said calmly, but his eyes burned fiercely.

Reeve stayed motionless, his eyes darting wildly between ___ and Ignis.

“Release her now…I won’t ask you again.” Ignis pressed the dagger deeper into his skin, enough for a thin line of blood to begin to drip down his neck. Reeve released his grip. ___ gasped for air and rubbed her throat. Gladio held her up as she regained her composure.

“I’ve got you.” Gladio said to her soothingly.

Despite Reeve following his instruction Ignis had not lowered his blade. “Ignis…let’s go.” Noctis said. Ignis snapped out of his trance and lowered the blade. They all walked away from Reeve, who dropped to the floor and wailed into his hands.

Chapter Nine

 As she was idly rubbing the formula on her various cuts and bruises she mused out loud. “I hope Reeve’s gonna be ok…”

The boys looked at each other around the camp fire, unsure if they heard her correctly.

“You still care about what happens to him after what he did to you?” asked Noctis.

“Of course I do. These men have suffered at the hands of the Empire, they’re only acting on fear. The Nif’s are taking away their freedoms and parading false glory in their faces. It’s brainwashing.”

I felt this on a personal level as this is almost identical to how I react to someone hurting me.

Chapter Ten

Honestly, this entire chapter was incredible. There wasn’t just one line that I couldn’t stop reading. From beginning to end I was captivated by the world building. The Tueri lineage and connection to Bahamut, and the sexual tension built by Ignis’ suave kiss. *swoons*

Chapter Eleven

“I’ve had enough of you trying to deter me from my destiny! The Niflheim Empire is sapping the essence of the people of Eos, the people that your God chose to protect. You mock me as a mere mortal, but Bahamut himself chose me to protect this world and everyone who wants to save it from the Darkness.” ­­­___ placed her hand to her chest. “I AM the Dragon Knight. Once I have taken back the land from Niflheim I will banish the Darkness forever. I need the Rakuyo to fulfill my purpose… if you will not give it to me, then I will take it from you!” She cried out, her words echoed around the chamber. It seemed to silence the roar of the flames that surrounded them. The Messenger stood motionless.

Out of all the world building in this story, this was what stood out most to me. The insert’s trial shows her strength through tribulation and provides a new level of respect for the reader.

““Oh, kitten.” Ignis purred, “This is not even the beginning of what I want to do to you.” He brought his hand to her chin and tilted her head upwards. Painstakingly slowly, he closed the gap between them and planted the softest of kisses on her lips. He lingered for a while, allowing her to focus on the feel of his skin, before he pulled away. ___ immediately moved to meet his mouth again, but Ignis withdrew, his lips curled into a devilish smirk witnessing her desperation for him. He left her against the tree stump, her chest heaving with lust, a wild confusion in her eyes as she watched him turn and walk away from her.

When he was almost out of earshot, ___ called out, “Ignis…”

As if her words shot a bullet of passion through his heart, he turned on his heels and stormed towards her. Witnessing the fire in his eyes, ___ felt her legs move as she made her way to meet him. When he got close he cupped her head in his hands and pulled her in for an explosive kiss. Her mouth immediately opened to let in his tongue as it massaged her own. His hands moved down to her waist, then wandered down to grip her ass as ___ wrapped her arms around his neck and locked him in her embrace, her fingers intertwined in his hair.”

My ultimate kink. This. Kitten. Explosive kissing. Intertwined fingers in hair. All of it.

[tslyricx]

1. WELCOME TO NEW YORK.

The opening track for 1989 introduced the world to a brand new Taylor Swift. After experimenting with electronic pop elements on Red, her country starlet persona was all but gone with the release of 1989.

The title is a literal way for Taylor to welcome fans to her new sound. Paralleling her own move from Nashville to New York, 1989 as an album reflects her new lifestyle; moving from her country roots to the big city with all its glitz and glamour. She told Rolling Stone in September 2014: “I really like my life right now…I love the album I made. I love that I moved to New York. So in terms of being happy, I’ve never been closer to that.”

Taylor teased the lyrics on Instagram on October 14, 2014, and it premiered on October 20 to everyone who pre-ordered the album. As proof of her love for her adopted hometown, all proceeds from sales of the single went to New York City Public Schools. The city also showed love back when they made Taylor a tourism ambassador. Despite all this, the song had mixed reviews, even being called “the worst NYC anthem of all time.”

The first line of the song introduces us to New York with the freshness Swift first experienced it with. The song jumps straight into feeling instant excitement – which is exactly what moving to New York felt like for Swift [and most who venture to the great city]. New York is known to be a hustling city, constantly filled with bustling: “Walking through a crowd, the village is aglow” The village’s glow represents the city lights – whether it be from buildings, cars or billboard signs – the city is never completely dark. This indicates how the city is always full of life and never sleeps. The word “aglow” also creates a fairytale-like, magical feeling. Taylor must have been enchanted to finally be welcomed to the city of her dreams.

The first verse continues by saying: “Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats” A kaleidoscope is a cylindrical, mirrored object that one can look into, and due to the mirrors' reflection you see many beautiful, colorful patterns. The “kaleidoscope of hearts” indicates when Taylor looks around New York, she sees the vast diversity of different cultures, dreams, passions and ideals of New York’s people. The heartbeats are loud because they aren’t timid or afraid; New York has inspired them to express themselves and be brave. The kaleidoscope shows that as people look around New York, their hearts light up and become inspired. As a kaleidoscope reflects beautiful images, New York spurs people to live out their dreams.This also contrasts the heartbeats and the coats. In addition, coats are man-made objects associated with cold, winter days, or serious businessmen or stark fashionistas. However, below lies the heartbeat, which is symbolic of life. This is a metaphor for how New York often seems to be a harsh concrete jungle, but beneath the surface, it’s filled with vibrant energy and inspired people.

In fact, People move to New York in search of chasing their dreams. It is known as the city where anything is possible: “Everybody here wanted something more Searching for a sound we hadn’t heard before” Swift also moved to New York because she was looking for change in her life and wanted some inspiration. Literally, the inspiration she got lead to the creation of her album, 1989 which is a sound we haven’t yet heard from Taylor before, her first full pop album.

As one of the most bustling cities in the world, New York, doesn’t “wait” for anyone — however, the magnificence of the city can make moving there seem like a turning point in someone’s life. This mirrors the sonic crossover in Taylor’s music from country to pop: “And it said Welcome to New York, it's been waiting for you Welcome to New York, welcome to New York Welcome to New York, it's been waiting for you Welcome to New York, welcome to New York” Taylor has shown her love for New York City numerous times — she owns a penthouse there, and has mentioned it in songs like “Come Back… Be Here.”

As we all know, this song is from her first pop album and is thus literally a new soundtrack. She loves her catchy new tune and knows it will go down as a classic for her to dance to even when she’s old: “It’s a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat, beat, forevermore” Figuratively, she is referring to the soundtrack of New York. This could refer to the sounds of the city that she has fallen in love with and thus never wants to leave. It could also refer to a sort of unheard soundtrack, which is just the underlying feeling and vibe of New York, which has made her feel a certain way that she never wants to lose and will always remember. The use of the word “soundtrack” also emphasizes how New York makes her life feel like a movie, as though it is almost too good to be true.

Actually, it’s not Las Vegas, but nonetheless, New York City has one of the brightest nightlife’s of all. “Bright” is used as a synonym for glamorous, as the lights aren’t actually glowing with enough intensity to blind her: “The lights are so bright but they never blind me, me” This may also be a reference to Jay Z’s hit song, ‘Empire State of Mind," in which he said, “lights is blinding, girls need blinders.” Taylor could be rejecting Hova’s claim that girls cannot handle life in the city. Taylor Swift, as a virtually peerless pop superstar, has more “bright lights” on her than anyone else. It’s more fame than has brought down countless other celebrities, including Joni Mitchell, who Taylor wrote a song about. Is Swift bragging about her ability to cope? Perhaps it’s her country background that prepared her for the bright lights of mainstream success. It would certainly fit the song’s metaphor; New York is the most populous city in the US, and the center of show biz, and stage lights.

In fact, New York is a form of escape from the life you lived before. It is a place where you can turn a new page: “When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors Took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer” Dropping the bags on the floor indicates two things:

She’s ready to unpack. This means she’s ready to start afresh, try new things and explore what New York has to offer. 

She is dropping baggage. She’s letting go of any emotional drama or hurt she had before, as New York allows her to be free from all her troubles and just live her life. This feeling is reiterated with putting a broken heart away in a drawer.  New York hosts a large LGBT community, due to its liberal nature, and historical movements like the Stonewall uprising: “And you can want who you want Boys and boys and girls and girls” Swift has shown support for the LGBT community numerous times, including when she defendedlesbian singer Hayley Kiyoko after the media twisted something Kiyoko said about her; Kiyoko later joined her onstage at the 2018 reputation Stadium Tour to perform her song “Curious.” Also at the reputation Stadium Tour, Swift dedicated a speech to her LGBT fans.  New York is a great love of her life. It is full of mystery and is always unpredictable. Sometimes, it frustrates and scares her because of the unpredictability and craziness. But, at the same time, she loves the excitement of the city and wouldn’t change anything about it, and the same goes for love: “Like any great love, it keeps you guessing Like any real love, it's ever-changing Like any true love, it drives you crazy But you know you wouldn't change anything, anything, anything” During an interview, Taylor revealed that after moving to New York, the recurring theme in her songs about love and relationships seemed to have less of an influence than before, although it was still somewhat prominent. These lines compare her experiences with past relationships the excitement of being in NYC. Another way to interpret this line is to compare Taylor’s love for the city that never sleeps to a love she might have for a person. Taylor is no stranger to the idea that people tend to walk out on others, but since New York is a city, it will always be there for her to be inspired by. Why is New York importan to Taylor? “When I first discovered that I was in love with performing, I wanted to be in theater. So growing up, New York City was where I would come for auditions. Then I started taking voice lessons in the city, so my mom and I would drive two hours and have these adventures. I actually have a photo of my first Knicks game. I was 12 years old and I was in a halftime talent competition, but I didn’t win because the kid who won sang “New York, New York,” and I was like, “Here’s a song I wrote about a boy in my class …” I’m as optimistic and enthusiastic about New York as I am about the state of the music industry, and a lot of people aren’t optimistic about those two things. And if they’re not in that place in their life, they’re not going to relate to what I have to say.” What has Taylor said about the song? Taylor said: “I wanted to start 1989 with this song because New York has been an important landscape and location for the story of my life in the last couple of years. I dreamt and obsessed over moving to New York, and then I did it. The inspiration that I found in that city is hard to describe and to compare to any other force of inspiration I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s an electric city.” Favorite lyric: “You can want who you want/Boys and boys and girls and girls” Album: 1989, released on the 27th of October, 2014. Witten by: Taylor Swift & Ryan Tedder. Hidden message: We begin our story in New York. Picture: 1989 deluxe version’s Polaroid.

[caveartfair]

Queer Art, Gay Pride, and the Stonewall Riots—50 Years Later

My first forays into the Lower East Side of Manhattan began in 1972. I was an eccentric Black 17-year-old from Montreal, wearing eyeliner, looking for my flock. I arrived after the Stonewall Riots to a world of off-off-Broadway theatrical characters. It wasn’t until 1976 that I would firmly transplant myself to the Lower East Side with plans to pursue my vision of life as a poet and artist.

It’s been 50 years since Stonewall. In our new age of corporate marketing, the annual Pride March has become a celebration of pride without anger, as if we need not continue fighting for our lives, our civil and human rights. How would our ongoing struggle be portrayed in the various anniversary exhibitions on view in New York: “Art after Stonewall: 1969–1989” at the Leslie-Lohman Museum and the Grey Art Gallery, and “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall” at the Brooklyn Museum.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Americas, 1987–88/2007. Courtesy of the artist, Salon 94, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum / Art Resource, NY.

I was 14 years old at the time of the riot in June 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-run gay bar in Greenwich Village, fought back against law enforcement’s oppressive bullying. I was living in Montreal, a place that was progressively liberated. Amendments to the Criminal Code to relax laws against homosexuality were proposed by then-Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1967, two years before Stonewall launched gay rights into the spotlight in the United States. The bill to decriminalize homosexuality was passed in Canada in 1969, and likely overshadowed any press of Stonewall in my world.

Due to my delayed landing in New York in 1972, I’d missed that year’s annual commemoration of Stonewall. In the years that followed, I have memories of throngs of folks gravitating west on the last Sunday in June for the Gay Liberation Marches. I rarely followed. I wasn’t interested in the mob mentality of marches or parades; I preferred avoiding them altogether.

Peter Hujar, Gay Liberation Front Poster, 1970. Courtesy of the Leslie-Lohman Museum.

Diana Davies, Gay Rights Demonstrations, Albany, NY, 1971. © The New York Public Library.

The first march was a protest for civil and human rights; anyone could join in off the streets. Today the parade has been taken over by corporate-sponsored floats that tout how wonderful it is to be gay. Onlookers can no longer participate—railings guard the long line of floats. Considering the unequal society we still live in, this is shameful. Whatever liberation we feel we’ve won in our post-Stonewall age of illusion reminds me of what the transgender activist Sylvia Rivera had to say in a 1995 interview, clipped in Sasha Wortzel’s 2018 video, This is an Address, on view in the Brooklyn Museum show: “Fight for something and stop being comfortable.” We’re still at war.

There’s a suggestion that the tide may be turning. This year there are plans for concurrent marches. The nonprofit Heritage of Pride will make a loop from the Flatiron District to Stonewall and up to Chelsea with its sponsored floats behind an impenetrable wall of police barriers. A second parade, organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, will follow the path of the original march—without barriers or corporate floats—to refocus our demand for civil rights.

Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1975. © 2018 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The Leslie-Lohman show spans the 1970s, the period covering my early introduction to the Lower East Side, where I still live today. For a brief period in the mid-’90s, I lived on Fifth Avenue, situated on Manhattan’s East/West divide. I never felt comfortable on this border. The ethnically diverse East Village was always preferable to the homogenous commercialization of the West Village. With the exception of occasional visits to the West Side piers or visits to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on Christopher Street, where my first chapbook of poems was distributed, I rarely crossed over. Marsha P. Johnson would hang out on Christopher Street. I met her on the Lower East Side in 1972, when she was rehearsing with the Hot Peaches.

Ann Patricia Meredith, Lesbian Physique, Gay Games II/Triumph In ‘86 San Francisco, CA, 1986, from “A Different Drummer,” 1970–90. ©annpmeredith.com 6.1986.

During this time, drag and queer performance art might appear out on the street. The late performance artist Stephen Varble is represented in the show in two photographic portraits by Greg Day and Peter Hujar. By chance, I witnessed some of Varble’s antics on West Broadway in the mid-’70s. On the weekends he would arrive to SoHo in a limo to then tour the streets in his elaborate costumes.

Then there’s a 1970 poster by Martin Wong advertising the Cockettes, a group of theatrical drag personas—a big disappointment as far as performance from what I remember—who nonetheless left an indelible impression on what queer could look like. Without the glittered beards and eccentric drag of the Cockettes or Stephen Varble, would there ever have been the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? All of their camp aesthetics were foregrounded by Jack Smith’s earlier 1963 movie Flaming Creatures, which is not included in the exhibition. The color film’s graphic depiction of queer sexuality is canonized in gay history.

Peter Hujar, Daniel Ware (Cockette), 1971. © 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive LLC. Courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

For the most part, the show largely presents documentary photography, portraiture, and archival materials that highlight what has always been visible. The prominence of these pictures had me wondering why there isn’t more work included by artists that took on the spirit of the post-Stonewall era to make more interpretive creative statements about being queer.

We had always been in the picture, but in the post-Stonewall era, unabashedly so.

What is recovered from this period in photography, though, will live on for generations. Photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, and Alvin Baltrop exposed the predominance of the body and queer sex play among the gay community in the 1970s. I liked seeing the representations of ourselves so openly. We had always been in the picture, but in the post-Stonewall era, unabashedly so.

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Jack Smith, Untitled, c. 1964–1981. © Jack Smith Archive. Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

Conceptual representations of queerness are best exemplified in the show by the remarkable number of works by women. Kudos for that. There are so many I’ve never heard of, for no good reason. The abstractions produced by now-well-known lesbian artists like Harmony Hammond, Joan Snyder, Barbara Hammer, Lula Mae Blocton, and Fran Winant, gathered in one gallery, provide alternative thinking about queerness as a visual metaphor. Snyder does an exemplary job of this in Heart On (1975), a sutured, textural abstract painting that had me thinking about how we contain our feelings, blending or contrasting one in relation to the other.

Louise Fishman, Angry Jill, 1973. © Louise Fishman. Courtesy of the artist.

Joan Snyder, Heart On, 1975. Photo by Jack Abraham. Courtesy of the artist and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Harmony Hammond, Duo, 1980. © Harmony Hammond/Licensed by VAGA via ARS, New York. Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates, New York.

Mary Beth Edelson, Happy Birthday America, 1976. Courtesy the artist and David Lewis, New York.

Louise Fishman, Angry Louise, 1973. © Louise Fishman. Courtesy of the artist.

The figures who created platforms for this work to be visible to the larger public are also lionized. Holly Solomon was a champion for what the queer 1970s had to offer. She was the first art dealer to show Mapplethorpe and embrace Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt with her eponymous gallery. I would get to know Holly personally in the ’80s when I began my own gallery venture with Gracie Mansion. Holly always appreciated our glitzy aesthetic.

Judy Garland appears in the Grey Art Gallery’s iteration of the show, representing the 1980s, in Pride 69–’89 (1989), a video by the collective DIVA TV. There’s a persistent belief that the Stonewall Riot happened because many gay folks were mourning Garland’s death. Here, she is a reminder to never forget what was lost to the generation after Stonewall. Robert Gober’s Untitled Closet (1989) announces what we could expect to discover in the ’80s: An empty closet with the door removed. After coming out in the ’70s, we were now all about being center stage, even as AIDS was killing too many of us.

Our passion for loving was seen as killing us, although it saved us, liberating our desires and solidifying our emotional bonds by the time AIDS arrived.

The queer presence in the East Village became a press magnet. They tagged it “the East Village Scene,” as if there weren’t numerous other scenes at its edges. We were flooded with talented artists and more and more places to present their work. New doors would open in the ’80s when the clubs really got going. They were certainly more familiar social settings than the West Side bars that too often didn’t welcome Black folks. Venues like Club 57, The Pyramid Club, PS 122, 8BC, La MaMa, and the Theater for a New City centered queerness. These were the places I ventured in my neighborhood.

With the introduction of these spaces, queer performance art became even more evident. John Kelly, Karen Finley, Tim Miller, Klaus Nomi, Keith Haring, and David McDermott grew out of a different scene than John Vaccaro, Charles Ludlam’s Theater of the Ridiculous, the Hot Peaches, and the Blacklips Performance Cult—inhabitants of the theatrical world I was introduced to when I first arrived in New York. In the ’80s, drag performers like Ethyl Eichelberger and Penny Arcade crossed over to the burgeoning art world club scene.

Jimmy DeSana, Television, 1978. Courtesy of the Jimmy DeSana Trust and Salon 94, New York.

Greg Day, Stephen Varble at the 12th Annual NY Avant Garde Festival, 1975. Courtesy of the artist.

The ’80s were my biggest swing. I was submerged in art and sexual adventures on the Lower East Side, SoHo, and Tribeca. Jimmy DeSana’s images from this decade always skirted the edge of that culture. I met Jimmy when I was curating photography exhibitions in the late ’70s, soon after he created the pictures from his “Submission” series (1979). The image used to represent him in this exhibition, Television (1978), is Surrealist in nature. DeSana is shown lying on seamless paper, nude save for a leather mask covering his face, as he props up a plugged-in TV with his feet. The photograph alludes to a fetishized sexuality that was a part of our generation’s playtime. The parties would eventually end and turn us into warriors fighting for our lives during the AIDS pandemic.

“What is the sound of ballroom?” asks Dance Tracks 1973–1997 (from the Ballroom Archive & Oral History Project Interviews), a 2010 project presented by Ultra-Red and the Vogue’ology Collective. I never attended the balls or Keith Haring’s parties at the Paradise Garage where Grace Jones performed, but what a brilliant consideration. This work and several others included in the show clearly bring into view the presence of a Black gay cultural movement.

Keith Haring, Safe Sex, 1985. © Keith Haring Foundation.

The Other Countries collective of Black gay male writers are the subjects of Marlon T. Riggs’s film with Essex Hemphill, Affirmations (1990), and Lyle Ashton Harris’s Americas triptych of black-and-white photographs (1987–88) presents the artist and a model posing in whiteface in the tradition of African warriors.

We were not a monolithic group. That Fertile Feeling, a 1980 video featuring Vaginal Creme Davis performing in the artist’s usual over-the-top madness, provides boundary-pushing proof that being queer in all its diversity was happening in art at the same time, even though much of it went unrecognized because of the respectability politics that many of us were pushing against.

Yet the exhibitions offer no picture of what our AIDS life looked like. To my surprise, not one Hugh Steers painting was to be found. Tragic. His was a true artistic expression of what was happening in our world at the time, in our war against a system that compromised AIDS education and promoted fear that stigmatized people living with the disease.

Names Project Foundation, AIDS Memorial Quilt, Block 001, 1987. Courtesy of the NAMES Project Foundation.

Fear put many back in the closet. They wanted us dead, as David Wojnarowicz suggested in his 1990–91 broadside Untitled (One Day this Kid…). Sex clubs and bathhouses shut down. Our passion for loving was seen as killing us, although it saved us, liberating our desires and solidifying our emotional bonds by the time AIDS arrived.

What’s left to say about this is predominantly illustrated by Gran Fury’s political protest posters, which were well publicized in ACT UP demonstrations. Why photographer Lola Flash, a member of ACT UP and the affiliate group Art+, was never recognized for her color reversal photographic prints, astounds me. Many of Flash’s works document political protests and actions in which the artist herself was a participant. She is represented in the show by a single photograph, AIDS Quilt (1987).

Gran Fury, The Government Has Blood On Its Hands, 1988. Courtesy of Avram Finkelstein.

What the artists in both exhibitions have in common, although it’s barely touched on, is that they all lived through the worst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They witnessed too many dying or were themselves afflicted. Visual AIDS, a nonprofit New York arts organization formed in the late ’80s, would bring it all together. AIDS decimated and affected the larger part of our queer and non-queer allies. In the ’90s, I was invited to join the Visual AIDS board with my interest in developing the Archive Project. That is when the invisible became visible and I could begin to connect the dots.

The Brooklyn Museum was a different experience entirely. “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow” tells a more inclusive story of the Stonewall Uprising, directly connecting it to the remarkably diverse community of LGBTQ+ artists carrying on the legacy of Stonewall today and into the future. These artists have come into their own within the developing culture of queer studies and gender theory that came to fruition in the 1990s, well after Stonewall.

David Antonio Cruz, thenightbeneathusacrystalofpain, portrait of ms. dee, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Mohammed Fayaz, Volume 29: Summer Honey, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

The artists in the exhibition have an eye toward the past; Hugo Gyrl’s vinyl wall piece from 2019 reads: “THE FIRST PRIDE WAS A RIOT! KNOW YOUR POWER.” Yet other sections of this show create much-needed spaces for imagining and organizing toward more equitable futures and new ways of living. One vital platform centers on how gentrification and violence continue to affect our communities today, while another explores attraction and intimacy.

Some of the works in the Brooklyn Museum show call out the racism that many of us experienced but that is rarely mentioned in gay history. Happy Birthday, Marsha! (2018), a film by Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel that imagines a day in the life of Marsha P. Johnson, brings us there. Others bring into question the segmentation of what we think of as the gay community—not one but many disparate communities with different needs.

Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline, Happy Birthday, Marsha! (film still), 2018. Courtesy of the artists.

Urgency (2015) by Linda LaBeija speaks to our responsibility to the trans community. Wortzel’s This is an Address I, II (2019) highlights the growing homeless population, especially among queer and trans youth, and the limits of obtaining social services without an address. Other artists reveal personal, interior views of being in a queer world. Rindon Johnson’s video poem It is April (2017) and Mark Aguhar’s I’d rather be beautiful than male (2011–12) are both tender and touching.

Rindon Johnson, featuring Milo McBride, It is April, 2017. © Rindon Johnson. Courtesy of the artist.

The Brooklyn venue also brings us into the experiences of the marginalized, lost, and forgotten. LJ Roberts’s lightbox installation from 2019 is a memorial to Stormé DeLarverie. According to many eyewitnesses, DeLarverie, a butch lesbian, provoked the tussle with police that triggered the Stonewall Riots. The work calls on us to pay tribute to a figure too often lost in our remembrances.

Some things never change. Mentioned in all of the exhibitions are the George Segal sculptures that rest in the park across from the Stonewall Inn. Many community activists have created controversy around them. As an archivist, I try to make sense of what’s evidenced and question assumptions while considering what can be discovered in attempts to fill in the gaps.

The sculptures, completed in 1979 but not installed in Christopher Park until 1992, comprise bronze casts of two pairs: one standing male couple and a seated female couple. The figures are painted white, a suggestion of the artist’s method of plaster casting by wrapping his subjects in gauze. They are described in the “Art after Stonewall” catalogue and the wall text in “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow” as whitewashing Stonewall’s legacy. This has me scratching my head.

Sculptures by George Segal at Stonewall National Monument in Christopher Park, New York. Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/UIG via Getty Images.

The ignorance that so many of these protesters proclaim in their “controversy” is disingenuous. The figures, who appear covered in bandages, show no implication of race. As I see it, these “bandages” are quite a fitting representation of the damage done to our community, our existence, and survival through the AIDS pandemic. To misrepresent these sculptures as disparaging to people of color seems ridiculous. People of color were so instrumental in the history of the Stonewall Uprising but many have never recognized how badly we’ve been treated by the very community we’re expected to embrace. Redressing that by protesting and implicating the sculptures as a sign of our further erasure seems like a ploy to alleviate guilt.

Adam Rolston, I Am Out Therefore I Am, 1989. © Adam Rolston. Courtesy of the artist.

Let’s be honest here about the extent of our progress. The celebrated sculptor Louise Nevelson had originally accepted the commission before it was offered to Segal, but according to the “Art after Stonewall” catalogue, her “‘business advisors’ persuaded her that public affirmation of her lesbianism would hurt the career of her younger lover, also an artist, so she pulled out.” That’s the way the art world was then. Would the advice Nevelson’s advisors gave her be tolerated in the art world today? Is that a rhetorical question? Maybe.

from Artsy News

[38-planes]

Come From Away Actress Jenn Colella is Out, Polyamorous & Tony-Nominated

Out.com [May 8th, 2017]

One of the Broadway season’s biggest hits, the seven-time Tony nominated Come From Away is a rousing, folksy show about the real-life incident where planes were diverted to a small town in Newfoundland on 9/11 and, for the most part, its passengers were welcomed and celebrated.

A testament to human decency, the show features a gay male couple who slink around the town, terrified of stepping into homophobia, but feel way more comfortable when they realize the people there are just plain nice. The show’s LGBTQ presence is upped by the fact that Beverley Bass, the lady pilot who landed the musical’s central plane in Canada, is played by the self-described “mostly gay” Jenn Colella, who just got her first Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Jenn debuted on Broadway in 2003 in Urban Cowboy and has many other credits to her name (including shows like High Fidelity and Chaplin).

I recently caught up with her to discuss her work and personal life.

Hi, Jenn, Congrats on the nomination. I heard that Beverley Bass, the pilot you play, adores the show so much, she’s a repeat viewer.

She’s seen it 62 times. She loves it. She’s not just given it her stamp of approval, she cries and gasps every time as if it’s her first time. She was the first female captain on American Airlines. She was retired, but since the show, she started to creep back into flying. It ignited it again.

When did you meet her?

Not until the last preview in La Jolla (the California venue where it played pre Broadway). In a restaurant, we spotted each other across the room and she came up to me and said, “I think you’re playing me.” I said, “I think you’re right.” She has definitely helped inform some of the things people put into the show. There are more stories she shared with the writers that got integrated, and I started adding little mannerisms of hers to make it as authentic as possible.

The message of the show is so uplifting that you must get incredible responses to it.

It’s been awesome, especially right now. It’s become the norm to be mean and spit vitriol at people, and we’ve gotten out of the practice of kindness. This shows us to practice kindness and says that we are all inherently good, which I deeply believe.

With the conversation about immigration raging, Come From Away reminds us how we need to welcome foreigners.

100%. I couldn’t agree more. When tragedy happens, you don’t care about their religion or socioeconomic background or where they stand politically. You shouldn’t at any time. I think these Canadians live this way all the time. It’s a reminder that it’s possible all the time.

Speaking of living openly: Were you always out in your career?

I wasn’t until I did an off-Broadway play [in 2008] called The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, taken from the Ann Bannon pulp fiction novels, playing a butch lesbian. I was getting a lot of attention, and it didn’t feel right not to be out anymore. It felt ridiculous, in fact. When I first got to New York, I was encouraged by people I respected to not come out. But I couldn’t do that anymore.

In 2013, you played a lesbian again in If/Then. You’re getting typecast.

[Laughs] Awesome, that’s great. Let’s do that all day long.

You told the New York Times you’re “mostly gay.” Offstage, are you dating or married?

I’m in a polyamorous relationship. I’m currently dating a married couple [a man and a woman]. They live in D.C. And I’ve also just started dating another woman.

Is she in the business?

Yes.

So these are obviously open relationships.

Yes.

In fact, you’ve said that your girlfriend is now on OK Cupid. Have you ever had longtime monogamous lovers?

Many. I’ve been married twice, and I used to joke that chicks love it when you propose.

But we haven’t had same-sex marriage long enough for you to have been married that many times.

It wasn’t legal. The first one was in ’95—a big ceremony in South Carolina [where Jenn was born and grew up]. It was a huge uproar. I was 21 and she was 10 years my elder, and the state newspaper covered my wedding and they had thousands of cancellations of the newspaper in protest. Then I remarried nine years ago, and it still wasn’t quite legal then. That one was dissolved as well. I’ll probably stop proposing. [laughs]

Why did you go ahead with these ceremonies if they weren’t legal?

The ritual of it. Humans love rituals. We like to get together and celebrate and make proclamations. It means so much. I don’t regret it. Both were incredible marriages and beautiful weddings.

What’s your best feature as person?

My practice of kindness. It’s really something I’m dedicated to. I try to treat each person I meet with respect and be as pleasant as possible.

Your best quality as an actor?

It might be the same. My present awareness helps me stay in the moment onstage. I believe I’m talented, but I think we’re all talented in New York, and a great deal of what I’ve accomplished is my leadership ability and my ability to help form a family on a show. I put myself in that position. They call me captain.

In every way!

I try to connect with each person. It’s kind of insane that I got a nomination when it’s such an ensemble show, but I put myself in the position where people look to me like a leader.

One last question about Beverley: Did she experience misogyny as a female pilot?

Absolutely. “Me and the Sky” [Jenn’s big song in the show] is almost directly taken from transcripts. She talks about the WWII pilots calling her “baby” and literally saying women don’t belong in the cockpit.

I guess they take the word “cockpit” very seriously.

[We both laugh].

THE SEASON IN GAY

The gay male couple in Come From Away aren’t the only LGBTQs on Broadway this season. Also up for Tonys: Lesbian playwright Paula Vogel’s Indecent is about a real-life Yiddish play that dabbled in lesbianism, to the horror of cultural oppressors. War Paint—a musical about warring cosmetics titans—has a character who shifts corporate allegiances, but is always true to his male partners. And in the realm of revivals: Falsettos deals with a man, his wife, his lover, and AIDS. Six Degrees of Separation centers on a real-life con artist who beds a hustler and flirts with anyone who can help him. And The Glass Menagerie’s narrator, Tom—based on author Tennessee Williams—has always had gay subtext, but with openly gay Joe Mantello playing him, it’s possible it comes out even more. The season also brought us a gay who has trouble dating, a small-town gay who’s not afraid to let his father know, and same-sex couples dancing at a ball.

Among the Tony nominees are the openly LGBTQ David Hyde-Pierce, Andrew Rannells, Gavin Creel, and Nathan Lane. And Jenn Colella! Congrats to all for a diverse and stimulating bunch of work.

A TARD DAY’S NIGHT

A polyamorous couple comprises one of the sketches in Unitard’s show Tard Core (There Are No Safe Words) at Joe’s Pub, but that sort of thing is mercilessly skewered, as per usual with this troupe. (“We have rules. You can cum in their mouth, but you can’t hold hands.”) In the riotously funny show—which will have you spitting out your overpriced wine—the comic trio also lampoons people who troll Whole Foods for tofu key lime pies; Facebook addicts who are horrified that someone else posted a photo of their breakfast burrito and got more likes than their own inane posts; and Russian hackers who discover that Hillary’s password is “Monicasucks.”

The show starts with the long running trilogy of terror—David Ilku, Nora Burns, and Mike Albo—as folk singers musically lamenting what’s happened to New York City. (“Where have all the porn shops gone? Turned into Soul Cycles and nail salons.”) But while the edge-depletion of the new NYC is one of their favorite targets, Unitard also makes fun of anyone who whines about it too much. A satirical Mod Squad for the new age, they hold a mirror to our pretensions while carving up soulless real estate agents, fruity designers who’ve crash landed on QVC, and the desperate Ann Coulter, who has a cell phone battery for a heart. Best of all are the Narcissists Olympics sketch and one in which the comics are hemorrhoids popping up in Trump's butt and dodging all the fatty foods. No one is better at satirizing up-to-the-minute foibles than these three kooks. I would just add an 11 o’clock sketch probing some really dark pathos and despair, just to bring things to a different level, but having nonstop hilarity is nothing to kvetch about.

STAND BACK

Pure entertainment was also on display at the 27th annual Night of 1000 Stevies, a riveting Stevie Nicks tribute at Irving Plaza, where “enchantresses of ceremony” Chi Chi Valenti, Paul Alexander and Hattie Hathaway, and DJ Johnny Dynell presided over swarms of twirling, spinning wiccans and vegans. The Garbo theme added yet another diva into the mix—the Jackie Factory is genius at blending metaphors—and the show sizzled with performers like Xavier, Divine Grace, and Amber Martin, who rocked the place with a fierily fierce “Angel.” “Stevie has a pre-existing condition,” I told the crowd as one of the night’s presenters. “She’s fabulous!”

SAINTS AMONG US

Tom Eubanks’ Ghosts of St. Vincent’s is a memoir about the legendary NYC hospital (now closed), which catered to AIDS patients like Eubanks, who also has researched the place’s extraordinary history from 1849 to 2010. I asked Eubanks, an old clubbing/ACT UP friend, to relate the most eye-opening things he learned about the hospital as a patient and author. He replied, “During my repeated stays during the height of the crisis, two things opened my eyes: time is subjective and friends are paramount. When you’re dying—or told that you’re dying and being asked if you’d like to see a priest about last rites—you achieve a kind of peace you never imagined on a deathbed. All sense of time ceases; it’s unnecessary, really. The only ones who gain any perspective when you’re dying are the people who visit.

“When you’re told that you will live, time and perspective return full-force. As I write in the book, it was a cruel trick Jesus played on Lazarus. That’s what AIDS did to all of us who made it through the maelstrom. The hospital’s destruction to make way for luxury housing illustrates the moving on of time we never thought we’d have. Also, it’s crucial to note that those of us who spent time on the seventh floor of St. Vincent’s learned a lot about selflessness, especially from the nurses and few remaining nuns.

“In a juicier vein, through my research I learned that St. Vincent’s was responsible for plenty of true life resurrection stories in its 161 years, with characters like Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sidney Lumet, Gloria Vanderbilt, Cardinal Franny Spellman, Ed Koch, the Ramones, Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vito Russo, and others, about whom I write in the book.”

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

In 1982, Hal Prince directed a gigantic flop of a Broadway musical in A Doll’s Life, a sequel to the 1879 Ibsen classic A Doll’s House, about a woman who breaks free of male oppression and finds liberation. Critics thought the original play was perfect enough, thank you, and found the musical additions uninvolving and unnecessary. If anything didn’t cry out for a sequel, it seemed, it was A Doll’s House. But here comes Lucas Hnath’s new play, A Doll’s House, Part 2, which shockingly makes the same premise work. First of all, Hnath starts the action 15 years after Nora Helmer has walked out on her husband Torvald (Chris Cooper), so he doesn’t even recognize her when he’s confronted with her again. (He never did notice her much anyway). Furthermore, the play—under Sam Gold’s direction—often attains a screwball comedy tone, with modern thinking and behavior mixed in and some wacky interactions that make things seem very now. The killer is that Nora—who’s now a successful writer of women’s books and has come back to finally make her divorce official—still faces battles with each person she talks to, whether Torvald, who still can’t see how he condescends to her; the chatty maid, Anne Marie (Jayne Houdyshell), who keeps insisting that Torvald isn’t necessarily unhappy without Nora; and Nora’s even chattier daughter, Emmy (Condola Rashad), who refuses to believe Mama’s idea that while love is grand, marriage is just enslavement. The resulting debates about romantic entanglement, responsibility, and compromise are fresh and entertaining, and there’s also pathos in the fact that Nora is still seeking validation. (Hnath has said that Nora and Torvald don’t really get to hash things out in Ibsen’s play, so he wanted to give them the chance to do so).

Miriam Buether’s set has the title in neon, which rises up (as the house lights stay on throughout the play), revealing simple furniture surrounded by very tall walls, making this home feel like a difficult one to escape, especially twice. Cooper is fascinating (and refuses to make his character an ogre), Houdyshell is hilarious, and Rashad is truly electric, with direct and affectless spoutings of Emmy’s logic. As Nora, Metcalf commands the stage, using all her expert comic and dramatic skills to create one of the season’s most indelible performances. I generally deplore sequels, but I hope they do A Doll’s House, Part 3.

MULTI-CULTI BROUHAHA

Notice that when I mentioned Rashad as Metcalf’s daughter, I didn’t say anything about the fact that she’s black. Who cares? She's brilliant. And while her casting is one of director Gold’s purposely novel touches, it’s not the first time she’s played a role written for a white person. She was Juliet in 2013’s Romeo and Juliet, cast because she’s good. And this season, the African American Denee Benton is playing the female lead in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and it didn’t bother me—or the Tony committee, which nominated her for Best Actress in a Musical—since she doesn’t happen to be Russian either. It’s theater. It’s acting. And I’ve long felt that people who aren’t white should not be penalized for their color and limited to roles any more than white people have been—and lord knows, Jonathan Pryce got flack for playing the Eurasian Engineer in Miss Saigon in 1991, but he also won raves and a Tony for it. Ideally, they should get the person who’ll give the best performance—and in the current production of Miss Saigon, it’s Jon Jon Briones, who’s fabulous. (And I didn’t sit there going, “But the character is half Vietnamese and half French, whereas Briones is Filipino American!”) Similarly, Glenn Close and Bette Midler might not be the right age for Sunset Boulevard and Hello, Dolly!, respectively—they’re older than what’s written—but they’re definitely the right people for the part.

Years ago, I got a screaming email from a theater writer (who just recently nabbed the critic’s job at a popular Broadway site). Since we were friendly, I thought he was going to say, “Thanks for doing that panel for me, which you just did,” but there were no niceties involved. He just launched into a fuming rant about how woefully wrong I was regarding something I’d written about multi-cultural casting. Seeing as his screechy email didn’t even bother to say specifically what he was reacting to, I had to dig into my brain and remember that months earlier, I had written a throwaway, light hearted sentence on the subject for a long-lead-time magazine. Lest I argue back, the writer’s screed included a pre-arranged defense, saying, “And don’t say people don’t usually sing in real life either!” blah blah blah, thereby trying to block any discussion on the matter. He had decided I was guilty of journalistic treason for not wanting to theatrically limit black actors to roles written for people of color—and my light hearted comment hadn’t even really said what I think on the subject.

But he guessed right. As I’ve said, I am in favor of not relegating black people to only Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess, Showboat, and August Wilson plays (and some other works). Some of those are great properties, but—with white people controlling the business for so many years—it becomes an unfairly limiting palette for those who didn’t happen to be born white. So, if Audra McDonald wants to play Maria Callas, I say fine. She’d no doubt be magnificent, and I can use my imagination for five seconds and then forget about her skin color for the rest of the show. I also don’t think trans people should just play trans people. They should play all people, just like cis people get to do. And last year, I liked The Taming of the Shrew with Janet McTeer as Petruchio and the biracial Cush Jumbo as Katherina. This season, I had no problem with multiracial castings in shows like Groundhog Day and Present Laughter and I didn‘t hear anyone else gripe about it either.

Of course, someone might interject, “But what if a white person played Othello?” I’d reply that the point of multi-cultural casting isn’t for white people to get more roles. And also, that things get sticky when you’re dealing with plays that are specifically about race. But ideally, if everyone becomes able to nab a larger variety of parts, that should be a viable possibility too, once we’ve arrived at a more equitable landscape. And if some bold director tries it before then, then we’d have to accept the fact that theater should retain the power to offend (though let’s definitely stop short at Olivier-like blackface. See, white people have already played the part). It’s complicated—and case by case—but I welcome alternative viewpoints, as long as they’re clear-minded and not screaming or patronizing.

[lalobalives]

*an essay a week in 2017*

A couple I know had twins prematurely a few weeks back. My partner Katia and I went to visit them. They’re tiny. 26 weeks. Just over a pound each, they’re being held in incubators, fed through tubes in their belly buttons, they have tubes in their noses, and IV needles in their little arms, nodes on their chests checking their vitals. I didn’t realize I’d be triggered. I went to support this beautiful lesbian couple. I went to show them solidarity.

As soon as I walked into the NICU, I thought: That was me once…

I felt the couple’s anxiety. The mom who carried the babies, is stoic and strong, but she was brought to tears that day when she said she couldn’t get her breasts to produce more than a few drops of milk. “It’s the only thing I can control,” she said through tears.

Her partner, who is always smiling and joking and making everyone around her feel warm, was all slumped shoulders and wet eyes. They both gush over their boys. They’re hopeful and so in love…

I can’t imagine what that must be like. I remember when I had my daughter nearly 13 years ago. The labor was so hard. 26 hours. I finally accepted the epidural at hour 18 when my doctor told me they would have to give me Pitocin to induce my labor because I was only dilated 3 centimeters. “I’m not supposed to tell you this but you’re having back labor, the most painful kind of labor there is. It’s gonna get a lot worse when we induce you. Take the epidural, Vanessa.” She brushed a wisp of hair form my forehead. I caved.

They finally decided to cut me open to get baby girl at hour 26. Nena started screaming before her body was out of me. Like she was sad to leave that place where I’d housed her.

Later, in the recovery room, a nurse came in and asked if there was a history of kidney disease in my family. I shook my head and asked, “What’s going on?” She said nothing but then asked me if I’d give them permission to do a spinal tap. “Just in case,” she said, a smile plastered on her face that I refused to believe. “No,” I shouted. “Bring me my baby.” They brought her to me a few minutes later. Her head was cone shaped because she was stuck in the birth canal for so long, she had my wide nose and these big, curious eyes that melted my insides. We stared at one another for a while. Then, I took out my breast and she latched on without issue.

I couldn’t imagine not loving this little girl. I couldn’t imagine not suffering if she suffered…

I think of my friends. I think of how they travel every day to the hospital to see their babies. I think of the photo they sent us when they were finally able to hold them. I think of how scared they are and hopeful…how hard they pray. I think of my mother.

I was that baby in an incubator. IV through my head because the veins in my arms and legs were too weak to hold a needle. I had nodes on my chest and head, monitoring my vitals. My body was bruised from the needle pricks. I spent much of my first year in the hospital.

It was an enzyme specialist visiting from Boston who took a look at me and discovered that I was born without enzymes to break down my food. That enzyme deficiency led to diabetes, or so I’ve been told. I didn’t know what all this meant except that I almost didn’t make it; and that it offered easy access guilting for my mother who talked about her “carreras con Vanessa.”

It’s now, at 41, after going to see my friend preemies, that I’ve really started to think about what it is I had and why my OB kept checking my sugar when I was pregnant with my kid.

***

A 3D model of pepsin, an enzyme that digests food proteins into peptides. Source: LiveScience.com

Enzymes are very delicate proteins that are responsible for carrying out virtually every metabolic function, from the digestion of food to the synthesis of DNA.

We have around 3000 unique enzymes in our bodies that are involved in over 7000 enzymatic reactions.

Whattoexpect.com writes:

Metabolic disorders are conditions that affect the way the body uses food (protein, carbohydrates, and fats) and converts it into energy or fuel. Under normal circumstances, a baby takes in food and then enzymes in the digestive system metabolize (break down) the food (or breast milk or formula), turning it into needed sugars and acids that the body can use right away or store for later. When a baby has a metabolic disorder, the body can’t break down the food correctly, which can cause the body to have too much or too little of certain substances (amino acids, phenylalanine, blood sugar to mention a few). 

Allegedly, newborn screenings can detect dozens of metabolic disorders, allowing your baby to be treated before symptoms arise. But the screening they did on me in December of 1975 didn’t detect the condition I had.

According to LiveScience.com:

Enzymes are biological molecules (typically proteins) that significantly speed up the rate of virtually all of the chemical reactions that take place within cells. They are vital for life and serve a wide range of important functions in the body, such as aiding in digestion and metabolism.

Some enzymes help break large molecules into smaller pieces that are more easily absorbed by the body. Other enzymes help bind two molecules together to produce a new molecule. Enzymes are highly selective catalysts, meaning that each enzyme only speeds up a specific reaction.

According to my research, babies with metabolic disorders often seem perfectly healthy after birth and show no symptoms — they can appear at any age, even in adulthood.

Symptoms showed up for me when I was just weeks old. I’ve heard stories about how sick I’d get. The diarrhea. The dehydration. The projectile vomiting. Mom didn’t know what to do. She told me of her carreras to the hospital. How hard it was to get the diagnosis. That doctors at Elmhurst Hospital told her that I wasn’t going to make it. That there was nothing they could do. That’s when she took me out of there. She had to sign a release form so she couldn’t sue the hospital if something happened to me. She carried me, on a makeshift board, to Columbia Baby Hospital, and it’s there that I was saved. 

Mom says she took me back to Elmhurst Hospital when I was two. I was a chunky, bright eyed toddler by then. They didn’t believe it was me.

But it was that visiting specialist that saved me. He put me on a special diet that introduced amino acids to my body. I basically had to teach my body to create enzymes.

I think about the profundity of that, and I know there’s a metaphor there though I can’t think of it yet.

Dr. Babatunde Samuel writes: “A chemical reaction without an enzyme is like a drive over a mountain. The enzyme bores a tunnel through it so that passage is far quicker and takes much less energy.” (Source: Metamia.com) 

I was born without the ability to make things easier for myself. I had to teach myself this skill… I had to teach myself how to create shortcuts. How to dig tunnels. How to create my own pathways…

I had to do this when I was months old.

So it was at months old that I taught myself how to create a life for myself. How I taught myself to leave at 13, to make my way in the world. How I taught myself to reinvent myself so many times…like I did seven years ago, when I quit my job to live this writing and teaching life. And like I did four years ago, when my brother died and I had to teach myself a new normal. I had to confront this grief I’ve carried for decades…this mother wound.

At months old, I taught my body a skill that has carried me throughout my life: how to create my own pathways. Shit…

***

I’m tired of writing about my mother and this wound. I’m tired of this obsession of mine.

I think of Virginia Woolf, who wrote in her autobiographical fragments that were later compiled in Moments of Being, “Until I was in [my] forties”—until she’d written To the Lighthouse—“the presence of my mother obsessed me. I could hear her voice, see her, imagine what she would do or say as I went about my day’s doings. She was one of the invisible presences who after all play so important a part in every life.”

Woolf’s mother died when she was just 13 years old. In his LitHub essay, Christopher Frizzle reveals that Woolf believed that the death’s “shock-receiving capacity” was what “makes me a writer.” Frizzle writes: “She thought the productive thing to do with a shock was to “make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.”

***

I’ve been rereading some of my essays from the Relentless Files Challenge I did last year. In Week 20’s essay, I wrote: “What I’m realizing is that what haunts me isn’t so much that I’m unmothered but why I am unmothered. What happened to my mother that made her this way? What happened to the women in my family that hardened them and made them unable to mother their children?”

Natalie Goldberg says: “Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.”

In his essay, Let Obsession be Your Ally: Be Haunted by It, Steve Almond wrote:

When young writers ask me what they should be writing about, I always say the same thing: write about what you can’t get rid of by other means.

Because your obsessions aren’t there simply to fill your mind and heart with junk. They are the deepest forms of human meaning, even if they seem frivolous or shameful.

I’ve written two novels where my protagonists have strained relationships with their moms. The women struggle to become women on their own, without the guidance of their mothers. In both books, the strained relationships are resolved in the end. I tried in fiction, to get what I haven’t gotten in real life: closure, understanding, restoration…

I’m not sure if that’s what I’m searching for in this memoir I’m writing. I know that this obsession is exhausting but it’s not going anywhere. It creeps in all the time. No matter how cheesy the movie or show, a scene between a mother and daughter easily undoes me.

Last night I watched that corny ass movie “Snatched” with Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer. There’s a scene where Schumer rescues her mom from where she’s being held captive. Schumer holds her mom and apologizes as she blubbers.“You’re always there. Sad or lonely, it’s 3 in the morning and I call… You always answer. You’re that person for me, mom.” I started tearing up. The scene was completely unbelievable and the movie is all sorts of absurd, but that scene still moved me. Why? Because I don’t have that. Because I’ve never had. Because I’ll never have that…hoping for it has caused more damage than I can describe, so relinquishing that hope was the safest and healthiest thing I could do for myself. And, still, there’s sadness in this. A deep sadness that walks with me.

There’s no sense in denying it. That won’t make it go away. I’m not sure anything will.

***

I was a mess when we got back from the hospital that day. I snapped at my partner, who was triggered for her own personal reasons. I’ve hesitated to write about this because this is a real situation that dear friends are enduring, and I don’t want to make it about me…but that’s not how obsessions or triggers work. They don’t ask for permission to come for you and drag you underwater. They don’t abide by any timelines or rules. They don’t have any sense of decorum or decency. They come and they haunt you. They demand that you pay attention and that you write about them. Here I am, listening…

  Relentless Files — Week 70 (#52essays2017 Week 17) *an essay a week in 2017* A couple I know had twins prematurely a few weeks back.

[wiseabsol]

Fanfics You Should Be Reading

Dæmorphing by Poetry

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/8983

Fandoms: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Summary: They can’t tell you their real names, or their dæmons’ names. The Yeerks are everywhere. But they’re going to fight back.

My thoughts: This is a beautiful reworking of the original series that does a much, much better job with its worldbuilding, with its exploration of alien cultures (and numerous human ones), and with the characters grappling with their trauma and the murky ethics of war. It’s also queer-friendly and gives side characters like Loren and Aftran more time to shine. “The Cowardice of Lions” is where it crosses the line from good to spine-tinglingly great.    

水火 by trascendenza

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120337

Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender

Summary: Azula, post-canon, picking up the pieces. When she tried, Paupau clicked her tongue behind her teeth and took Azula’s small hand in her own, held securely in the tiger’s mouth of her thumb and forefinger.

My thoughts: An absolutely gorgeous, post-series exploration of Azula’s recovery and her transformation into a less toxic person. There is a wonderful female mentor figure in this as well. 

Dominion by Aurelia le

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/1/Dominion

Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

My thoughts: While not for the faint of heart, this story explores the cycle of abuse in the Fire Nation royal family, with a strong focus on the psychological cause-and-effect of that abuse. It also interrogates the canon interpretations of its central characters in fascinating ways, unpacking the implications of how Azula behaves in the show and how deep Zuko’s anger goes. Finally, there is a hard look at how sexism impacts the characters, particularly with Ursa, who has internalized the patriarchy in ways that put a deep strain on her relationship with her daughter. I would love for this to be an original novel, but Aurelia sticks her tongue out at me whenever I suggest it.      

once a queen or king of narnia, always a king or queen by dirgewithoutmusic

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/82624

Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis

Summary: A lion told her to walk away, and she did. He forbade her magic, he forbade her her own kingdom, so she made her own. Susan after Narnia.

My thoughts: There is a powerful anger and sadness in these stories, in part due to Susan’s grief over losing her family and her kingdom, but also--on a meta level--at the sexism behind why she was rejected from Narnia. If you liked Neil Gaimen’s “The Problem of Susan,” but wanted more beauty and melancholy in it, then this series is for you.    

We That Are Young by Stoplight Delight  

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4175371/1/We-That-Are-Young

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Summary: It’s a well-known fact that innocents make poor soldiers. Fortunately, Riza Hawkeye’s childhood was not entirely innocent. She had to grow up fast… though she wasn’t the only one. The early years of the Colonel and his First Lieutenant.

+

Shall Never See So Much by Stoplight Delight  

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4396547/1/Shall-Never-See-So-Much

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Summary: In the military academies of Amestris, Cadets Mustang and Hawkeye are trained to command. They are groomed and prepared for firefights, hand-to-hand combat and even torture. But there’s one thing their schools cannot prepare them for: the reality of war.

My thoughts on this duology: This duology chronicles the childhoods and early adolescences of Riza Hawkeye and Roy Mustang in wonderful, but also tragic and painful, detail. It captures the setting and time period perfectly and makes every one of its characters, including the OCs, feel like real people. It’s agonizing that the second story isn’t finished, but what is there is rich and worthy of many rereads.   

Against the Moon by Stoplight Delight  

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7305052/1/Against-the-Moon

Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Summary: The odds were stacked against him: a child from a blended home with no friends, no social skills to speak of, and a terrible secret. Yet slowly Remus Lupin began to discover there was a place for him in the world, if he could find the courage to claim it.

My thoughts: The same author as the above, with the same loving attention to detail. This Marauders story captures the discrimination that Remus Lupin must have gone through in his youth far more accurately than the original books did, shows us the terror of Voldemort’s first rise to power, and makes Peter Pettigrew’s friendship with the group--and his eventual betrayal of them--make an incredible and terrible amount of sense. It’s a must-read for fans of the HP series.   

The Very Secret Diary by Arabella

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2345300/chapters/5171522

Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Summary: ‘His d-diary’ Ginny sobbed. ‘I’ve b-been writing in it, and he’s been w-writing back all year -’ Ginny’s first year in Hogwarts, written in diary entries.

My thoughts: One reviewer described this story as “demonic possession as a metaphor for domestic abuse and gaslighting,” and honestly, that encompasses this work perfectly. It starts off slowly and innocently enough, but by the end of it, you have a white-knuckled grip on your laptop/phone and only have the canon rescue of Ginny as a source of comfort. I would advise reading the one-shot follow-up, “Disenchanted,” afterwards to help settle your nerves. This is also the fic that made me a Ginny and Harry/Ginny fan in a way canon never managed to. 

boy with a scar by dirgewithoutmusic

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/285498

Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Summary: A series of “what if” rewrites of Harry Potter, books 1-7. What if other characters were the Chosen Ones, what if HP had queer leads, and what if characters like Petunia Dursley and Severus Snape weren’t such contemptible human beings?  

My thoughts: This series makes me sob my heart out, especially the Severus Snape one, which is completely unfair, given how much I loath Snape in canon. Overall, this series is full of touching moments and relationships, embraces queer relationships and identities, and gives you glimpses of the series you wished you’d read as a child. 

we must unite inside her walls or we’ll crumble from within by dirgewithoutmusic

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/136245

Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Summary: Stories for the ladies of Hogwarts, who cry, waver, giggle, trespass, and who deserve our respect all the same.

My thoughts: The same author as the above, but with more of a focus on the female characters and their own experiences as they grew up. Particularly memorable to me were the sections for Pansy Parkinson and Andromeda Tonks, which won me over to Pansy and made me ache for Andromeda, respectively. 

Persephone’s Waltz by ErinPtah

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577310/chapters/1035515

Fandoms: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Summary: The more times she fails to save Madoka, the more desperate Homura gets…until kidnapping her and locking her in a basement until Walpurgisnacht is over stops sounding like such a crazy idea.

My thoughts: This is a midquel in the PMMM story with a Room-esque flare to it. The writing is stark, Homura’s points of view match how much she’s slipping, and the story does a great job of showing the psychological damage done by captivity and by inferiority complexes. It’s more queer than the show is, with the lesbian ships being explored on page, rather than just teased. I often binge this one whenever I start re-reading it, because it’s so good.  

bringing the war home by dirgewithoutmusic

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/96290

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe / Agents of SHIELD

Summary: A series on the lives and times of the woman of the MCU.

My thoughts: Really you should just read everything direwithoutmusic has written, but this one has a special place in my heart for its sections on Natasha Romanoff and Gamora, which are heartbreaking, but also healing. “i dreamed of a day” in particular resonated with me, as someone who was raised in an abusive home and was appalled by how Gamora was treated in Infinity War. It’s a story I fully intend to record one day, because it means so much to me.    

Double Agent Vader by Fialleril

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/286908

Fandom: Star Wars

Summary: The one where Vader turned double agent for the Rebellion about three years after ROTS, and Leia is now his primary contact with the Rebellion. Alternate summary, according to TV Tropes: A man attempts to escape slavery by turning into one of his culture heroes, teaching his daughter how to do magic, killing people, and flower arranging.

My thoughts: A powerful reworking of the original trilogy, with a strong focus on the culture and storytelling of the slaves of Tatooine. It is also chock full of father-daughter feels and dramatic irony, and at turns has made me laugh with delight and cry.  

you can only use your own by feralphoenix

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/369158

Fandom: Undertale

Summary: You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it. - Audre Lorde. Or: Snapshots from a world where Chara and Asriel lived.

My thoughts: This AU put my heart back together after I finished Undertale. I subscribe to the “Chara is the Narrator” theory, so this captures everything I’d hoped for from a Chara characterization, without flinching away from how troubled they are. What I admire about this series is how compassionate it is to its mentally ill characters, how it confronts toxic relationships and works to make them healthier, how queer-friendly it is, and the Jewish representation within it.