#little essay

[kryptonbabe]

The gay experience in literature: a horror comic and a literary fiction novel parallel

From The Deviant #8 (2024) by James Tynion IV, Joshua Hixson & Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

The Deviant is a horror comic from 2024, What Belongs to You is a literary fiction novel published in 2016.

Sexuality encapsulates multiple aspects of human life, the physical / hormonal aspect of love, the emotional aspect of intimacy, the social / historical side of tradition and expectations based on notions of gender... It can be a lot, so it's alarming to think about all that happening during your teenage years, usually when the discoveries are taking place. It's just too much for someone so young to make sense of, especially when you do not conform to what is expected from you. The moment in the panels above took me to several places, some deep and personal and others relating to the familiarity of this scene from other books, specifically to one moment in the novel What Belongs to You by Garth Greewell.

In the second chapter of that novel the author describes a teen boy's sexual discovery, and I believe what he says works to expand the themes of self-hatred and disillusion some of us feel when our feelings are confronted by the heteronormative perspective of how love is supposed to be. These feelings are also present in the comic panels above, partially described, with the art also playing a part in evoking a sense of otherness and shame. There are differences in how rejection occurs in the comic and the novel, but despite that, I still felt an intertextuality in the way the emotions are expressed in these works.

For context, the scene in the novel takes place after the first night these two boys (the narrator and K.) spend together, they've been best friends until that moment and on that night they share moments of intimacy, cuddling together and letting all the confusing and satisfying feelings of sexual discovery take hold. However, K. gets sick and wants to go home, the narrator wakes his father, with whom he has an uneasy relationship much due to the narrator homosexuality, to drive his friend home.

Novel excerpt under the cut.

"As if by instinct we sat well apart, and though I couldn’t help glancing at him we said nothing to each other. Shortly into the ride I realized I could still smell him, not only his vomit but his body, too, his sweat, which was bitter and strong; I was embarrassed for my father to smell it. I lowered the window a little and laid my head against the glass. The air was cool as it flooded in but the foulness still remained, and though K. had always before filled me with joy he seemed part of my shame now and of the foulness in the air, not just a bodily foulness but something stranger and heavier. My father glanced at us often in the mirror, a quick flick of the eyes. K. sat with his face to the window but I thought he must feel it too, that watchfulness and the weight it added to the air. It was the watchfulness that made it foul, I realized, not with its own foulness but with a foulness it found in us. K. turned away from the window but didn’t look at me, and when I asked him if he was all right he didn’t answer, though when my father asked him the same question, the very same, as though he hadn’t heard me ask it or as though it were a different question from his lips, K. spoke, he said Yes, sir, and I felt him turn from me, in that foul air I felt him identify me as foulness. It was as though he felt my father was health and I contagion, and I was at once bewildered by this and unsurprised. Those were the only words they shared; for the rest of the drive we were silent, and it wasn’t until we arrived at K.’s house that he glanced my way and nodded, and then he thanked my father and got out of the car and hurried inside the door his mother held open. My father waved at her, leaning across to the passenger-side window, and then he reversed the car and slid out of the driveway as I turned to look at the door that closed behind K. When the car stopped for a light at the end of the street, I looked again at the mirror where I could see my father’s face. He was watching me, not with the flickering surveillance of moments before but steadily, and when my eyes met his he grimaced, as if he could still smell K., though there wasn’t any smell in the air anymore. I stared back at him. For a moment I thought he was going to speak and I steeled myself, I saw his face harden with what he would say; but instead he saw that the light had changed and began driving again, and I let my head fall back against the window, watching the streets as they passed. I had been ready to accuse my father of what he had done, the disgust he had shared with K., and I felt my anger again as I walked through the grass in that undeveloped space I hadn’t known was there."

From What Belongs to You (2016) by Garth Greenwell

I find this excerpt (the whole chapter honestly) resonant with my own experiences, I believe it's safe to assume it can resonate with others too. This also underlines the necessity of queer representation in art from multiple angles and in different mediums. From the early discoveries, being good or bad experiences, to late in life reflections... Give us all sides of the queer existence. We are multiple and there are more than one way to feel the world around us, and art is key to connect us despite our differences. Thanks for reading!

[joicecubes]

the implications of ford pulling this photo out of his trenchcoat in the last episode you guys… THE IMPLICATIONS.

look at the state of this thing!! look at its rips! the stain in the bottom right corner! it’s dog-eared, the color is faded, the paper has browned… he’s kept this photo of them since they were kids. through all the years he stubbornly swore to hold a grudge, all the years he and stan never spoke, he kept this photo.

and we can assume he probably didn’t have it dimension-hopping, since i find it hard to believe he would’ve had it on him when he initially got sucked in, but ford pulling it out of his trenchcoat here!! implies!! that he had been CARRYING IT AROUND WITH HIM for some time after he got back!

imagine if he found it in some of his old stuff the night he returned, after punching and yelling at stan, after being sure to keep as much emotional distance between them as possible, and he finds this photo. would he have stared down at it? for a little while? smoothed the creases out on his desk? thumbed the torn, loved edges while he mourned a simpler time? then pocketed the thing to always have it with him?

i dunno. maybe i’m looking too far into it. but i can’t help but wonder if ford kept it because, against all his big dreams and ambitions, deep down he always wondered what his life might have been like if he sailed away with his brother when they were teenagers. never able to throw it away because doing so would symbolically destroy the last remnants of a childhood fantasy, the last piece of him that remains young and hopeful of a future at his brother’s side.

[exeggcute]

btw did you guys see how the hannah arendt prize committee tried to revoke masha gessen's prize after gessen, a jewish journalist, wrote an essay about how zionists and zionist-sympathizing gentiles, particularly in germany, wield accusations of antisemitism to shut down anti-zionist jews... an essay in which they specifically quoted hannah arendt several times

[egophiliac]

I've had a beast of a cold for the last few days, but I wanted to get this out before the new year! while I've sort of made my peace with my first take on Lilia's UM poster, I really wanted to do a version with the new context that chapter 6 gave us. because. c'mon.

(don't worry, Lilia can carry ALL HIS KIDS AT ONCE)

[beetleandfox]

I love how unsanitized The Terror feels. Like there’s grime everywhere. You can tell those men smell bad. When they do surgery you can hear the bone being cut, when they get sick they look genuinely ill. The main character’s actor even has pockmarks, he LOOKS like he could be from the 1800s! And idk, I think it’s cool that we’re so aware of the characters’ carnal desires. They’re hungry, thirsty, freezing, etc, and it is so obvious that they have a body with needs!!

I think this also accounts for how horny the show feels, even though everyone is bundled up 90% of the time and there are no real romantic subplots. Besides the fact that it’s a very carnal show, it just has the intimacy and grime of true horniness. Is this thing on

[lazylittledragon]

can't stop thinking about how well they nailed falin's 'weird little girl' energy. when she picked up a stick and said 'ooh a bug' i felt that

[losersolace]

i think neither nico nor will is freaked out by blood and things of that nature. i see them sitting at the dinner table like “and then the monster just EXPLODED and its guts went EVERYWHERE—“ while calmly eating and the ppl around them are like ???

[swampjawn]

God I love animation. I love it for the way it can bring anything to life beyond the constraints of boring ol' reality, but also the ways that it's inextricably linked to, and draws on the conventions of live-action film-making.

So fuck it, let's look at how Hayao Miyazaki straight up copies some camera framing techniques from his predecessor and the other most influential Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa! (Kurosawa really was the master of framing scenes around his characters, so he's a great source of inspiration)

(btw, this is a screenshot from this TV special where the two met for the first time just after the release of Kurosawa's final film. It's pretty interesting, and also very cute how nervous Miyazaki seems to be to meet one of his idols.)

Specifically, how the two each choose to break the 180 degree rule (well, not technically 'break' in the case of Kurosawa) to show their protagonists' changing destiny in "Throne of Blood" and "Princess Mononoke".

For anyone who doesn't know, the 180 degree rule is a basic film-making rule of thumb which states that in any scene where two characters interact, you should draw an imaginary line between them and the camera should always stay on one side of that line.

("In the Mood for Love" - Wong Kar-wai)

This way, one character is always looking to the right of the camera, the other is always looking to the left, and the audience doesn't get confused by the geography of the scene. Crossing this line can be disorienting, but when done intentionally, it can convey a paradigm shift of some kind in the scene.

In this scene from "Throne of Blood," (a feudal Japanese retelling of Macbeth) Washizu's wife Asaji discusses tactics with him and tries to convince him to aspire to the throne and to assassinate his lord Tsuzuki while he sleeps.

As two servants appear to notify them that Washizu's sleeping quarters are prepared, the camera dollies left and around the characters' backs. This camera movement is motivated by the motion of the servants' torches outside the room, but it also signifies a change in Washizu's outlook.

Washizu is completely silent for most of this scene, contemplating his wife's advice. But as the camera slides behind his back and across the line of action, the scene is now re-framed, illustrating his change in perspective.

He's been convinced and the trajectory of his life is about to change - and now, facing away from the camera, is the time for action.

Because the camera slides smoothly across the line, Kurosawa isn't technically breaking the 180 degree rule. Miyazaki on the other hand, takes it a little further.

The complimentary scene in Princess Mononoke comes near the start when the wise woman of the village reads Prince Ashitaka's fortune after he's cursed by the wild boar spirit. She tells him that it is his fate to leave the village and travel to the west, where he may be able to lift the curse on his arm. The trajectory of Ashitaka's life changes in this moment too. As he accepts his fate, the change is symbolized by him cutting off his hair, but also by the camera jumping the line.

Throughout this dialogue scene and even as he cuts his hair, the simulated camera sits just slightly to the side of Ashitaka's left shoulder.

But once it's done, for the final shot, the scene is reframed and we jump to the other side, where Ashitaka is now looking to the right of the camera instead of the left.

Making the camera dolly across a scene like Kurosawa's version in 2D animation is no simple task, so this transition with a simple cut is in a way subtler, in another way a bit more jarring, but it conveys the same meaning.

This is the moment when our protagonists make the choice to embark on a new destiny and re-frame their lives.

This has been an excerpt from a short video essay I made a while back, which not many people watched. I think this is at least in part due to my failure to package it well, and it seems you tumblheads like this animation/cinematography analysis stuff, so this is an experiment to see if, with the help of y'all, and a new title and thumbnail, it's at all possible to give this video a second wind in the eyes of the Youtube Gods!

So if you found this interesting, I'd appreciate if you checked it out! Thanks for reading!

[housederiva]

[rendevok]

“Take my hand” pages 5-11

1 - day 2 - truth - 3

[aardvaark]

sophie’s expression in the inside job when she notices & picks up parker’s bunny is so sweet. like yeah seeing a stuffed bunny amidst the extremely spartan, dark warehouse filled with knives is a little adorable and a little heartbreaking and so very parker.

[kryptonbabe]

My uncomfortable queer experience, learning about others and a parallel with The Deviant comic book

As I was reading James Tynion IV's christmas / horror comic book The Deviant I found the very interesting (and terribly relatable) piece of dialogue between two gay men from different generations (excerpt above). The times change and the way we see our sexuality also changes, how we perceive our particularities, when we start to realize we don't fit in the molds of heteronormativity. That is to say I can't tell how it is to experience queerness as a kid today, but as the older guy says in the panels above, in my time figuring out my sexuality as a kid, 18 years ago, I also found out there were others like me from listening to condemning discourses against homosexuality, I was raised in the protestant church and that kind of thing was very common.

This first time I heard about gays and lesbians they were being demonized and associated with violent crimes, like their "corrupt love" could only ever result in pain and abandon. How many times I listen to stuff like that... I cannot possibly count, but they did hurt me. However, somewhere inside I felt this ashamed satisfaction... because if these "deviants" were being criticized that meant I was not alone... there were others. I remember this being the most bittersweet feeling ever, sad because I was for sure going to be unhappy for my sins, but happy because I was not the only one. Today I only hope our kids don't need to go through that and are able to learn about their sexualities in a more positive and safe environment, sadly I know it's not the case for everyone.

Talking about the queer experience across generations and cultures can be interesting, we can learn from each other and build a stronger community. Queer people today live in a different world, far from perfect, but better then the one we came from, to create bridges between our experiences can help us cope with the hardships of the past and present, it can be potentially healing, empowering.

I had never seen / read about this experience in such a blunt way anywhere else before, it might be ignorance of my part (maybe James Baldwin wrote something about this and I just don't know), but reading that complete dialogue in this comic book I felt validated. My experiences might be uncomfortable, but they exist and I'm not alone. It's interesting how the queer experience can be similar across generations and countries... Another example of how there can be comfort and acceptance in challenging art. I'm glad Tynion is writing this story, it's a violent and painful one, but very well done and carefully told too. Thanks for reading this!

From The Deviant #1 (2023) by James Tynion IV, Joshua Hixson & Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

[trauma-bot]

sin eater

[dreadfuldevotee]

But that was in another life, That was in another world

[purpleelephantsocks]

Oh god, oh fuck, oh no; the parallels between Jean at the beginning of tsc panicking and telling Wymack "I want to go home" and Jean at the end of tsc falling apart after finding out his baby sister has died, telling Neil the same thing.

"I want to go home."

He is only nineteen

[kiwikiwiandkiwi]

HARRY BEING HARRY ON TOUR — Love on Tour: UK + Europe Leg, 2023