#maybe stop assuming romance and sex are the only way to show queer stories

[redysetdare]

*bites off the head of everyone who calls aroand ace rep homophobic*

[bombshellsandbluebells]

hey friend, i mean this genuinely, but what's overtly romantic about Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship? maybe I'm not remembering a scene, but what does the show do that shows them being obviously romantic with each other? to me, the soundtrack including a "romantic" song while they eat lunch isn't really enough, as a lot of mid-2000s queerbaiting shows did similar things to wink at queer audiences in a way that cishets wouldn't notice.

Hi friend. Thank you for asking. I’ll try to explain my thoughts best as I can.

Here’s why I don't read Aziraphale and Crowley as queerbaiting: usually when queerbaiting happens, there's something used to suggest a queer relationship (a line, a scene, certain framing, marketing decisions - a wink and you'll miss it moment like you said) to entice queer audiences to watch and consume the media, and then afterwards a moment that explicitly goes back on that and denies it.

My understanding is that the point of queerbaiting is literally to bait audiences to watch. It's an unfulfilled promise of delivering content that people want to see that the media has no true desire to follow through with. It's to pretend to cater to an audience in order to gain that audience without actually delivering what they want.

Ex. Riverdale specifically cutting a trailer to include a scene of the two main girls kissing so that people would see the trailer, assume it means the show is going to explore a queer relationship with those characters, only for it to be revealed when the show actually airs that that scene truly meant nothing and was just a one-off moment to entice a certain audience. (I might be wrong on this, I don't actually watch Riverdale but this is what I gathered from Tumblr.)

Ex. Supernatural having moments between Dean and Cas that read as incredibly romantic, only to then follow up with a million moments that directly contradict that reading. Dean directly saying, "You're our brother, Cas" after a scene that got read as romantic. Etc. etc.

Ex. Marvel including blink-and-you’ll-miss-it representation to keep a certain audience loyal and tuning into their media under the guise that they’re supportive allies without ever actually focusing on queer stories.

To me, Good Omens never did that. It never had that moment that went "oh no, you're reading this wrong." It never denied or contradicted or went back on anything that suggested romantic feelings between Crowley and Aziraphale.

I feel like their relationship is treated with respect in the show. It's treated as important. It is the center of the show and arguably the most important relationship in the entire narrative, even though, importantly to note, Good Omens is NOT a romance. It is a story about stopping the apocalypse first and foremost, not just about Crowley and Aziraphale and their relationship. The main themes are about choosing your own fate and the relationships in the show directly relate to that (Adam choosing the Them, Newt/Anathema getting together initially because of a prophecy and Anathema then making the decision to stay with him after a book is no longer telling her what to do, and Crowley and Aziraphale choosing each other when their nature tells them they shouldn't.)

But Az/Crowley's relationship is still framed romantically. Think of the way moments between them are shot and edited. The music choices not just at the end but throughout the whole piece. The scene where Crowley saves the books and significant time is spent focusing on Aziraphale's reaction. The scene between them in the car. Them choosing each other in the end over everything. The way they look at each other and the way the editing handles that.

If Az/Crowley were a man and a woman, no one would think twice about labeling their relationship as romantic even without explicit "I love yous" or a kiss or sex. And granted, yes that happens with other media that is used as queerbaiting. BUT again, the most significant thing to me is that nothing in the text ever goes against the idea that they are in love. There's not one moment where they go "no, no I don't feel that way, he's just a friend" or anything else to contradict a romantic reading. The editing, the writing, the music choices, the way scenes are framed, the filmmaking in general is all very deliberate and at no point does it ever suggest that you SHOULDN'T interpret it romantically. (And frankly, I am a huge supporter of the idea that media is getting too lazy with it's visual storytelling and that MORE things should be shown purely through the filmmaking rather than dialogue. I think that framing their relationship the way they do is stronger than an "i love you" in dialogue without doing the work in the filmmaking, but that's a topic for another time.)

And those filmmaking choices were used deliberately from start to finish, all the way to the ending scene of them at lunch together.

I do want to say that I absolutely understand the reason why people felt let down. People want desperately to see themselves and their experiences represented in media, and there has been too long of a history of media promising something that people desperately latch onto only for it to not be sincere. And because of that, people want things to be expressed in media so explicitly that it can't be denied. I absolutely understand that. I just don't think that that always means that things have to be directly spoken in dialogue or confirmed with the things we think they need to be confirmed with (sex/kissing). I think film and tv can include things sincerely just using film language and filmmaking choices and for it to still be real and sincere and intended.

Ultimately I guess what I'm saying is I think queerbaiting is a very specific marketing tactic that happens with the end goal of getting viewers to tune in without actually delivering on what you know they're looking for, and I just don't feel that Good Omens falls into that. I felt like I was watching a story about an important relationship that was portrayed as the Ultimate Most Important relationship in these characters life in a genuine way, not being sold a false promise that the show later explicitly denied and contradicted. I never felt like the show said "gotcha" to me or "no you were wrong for reading it that way" or "of course that's not what that meant" which always happens with queerbaiting.

I was just watching a story about the apocalypse and one important relationship in that story. And I personally felt incredibly seen and represented by how Aziraphale and Crowley's story was told. Maybe not everyone did, but I did.

[c-is-for-circinate]

On Good Omens, queerbaiting, and heteronormative bullshit

Theory: Good Omens the miniseries and the way it treats relationships feels maybe a little weird and hits some of the same mental buttons as queerbaiting not because Aziraphale and Crowley are insufficiently gay, but because the entire rest of the show is.  In this essay I will actually write this essay, because no, really, I think it’s A Thing and I might even be able to prove it.

There’s a lot of nuance to both sides of the whole queerbaiting/not-queerbaiting argument, and I don’t want to neglect any of it, but I think my big takeaways have been as follows:

On the ‘this is uncomfortable and queerbaity’ side:

Good Omens the miniseries ramps up the emotional relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale to be the heart of the entire show.  Both demon and angel are coded as gay in a number of different ways, both individually and in terms of how their relationship is portrayed as a romance.  And yet despite being the core of the show, they never make any of it explicitly romantic.  There’s not a kiss, there’s not an ‘I love you’.  The entire relationship is built from implications rather than explicit statements.

Years and decades and centuries of storytelling have given us gay relationships that we have to look for.  That we have to find in implications rather than explicit statements.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so that content creators could keep mainstream/straight fans happy while also luring queer fans with crumbs and promises.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could slip hidden gay messages past censors.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could stay literally, physically safe.  But either way, it’s exhausting.  It’s been so long.  We want to see ourselves on screen.  We want somebody to admit out loud to what we’re seeing.  We’re tired.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are apologists and boot-lickers, ready to bend over backwards to defend their Precious Author Faves in hopes of receiving whatever crumbs they can get.  (Please note: this is an ad hominem argument with like ten different logical fallacies in it, and also it’s just mean.  We will be assuming that all parties in this discussion are attempting to act in good faith with a healthy dose of frustration, and largely ignoring this point.)

On the ‘no, this is Good Representation, really’ side:

Aziraphale and Crowley are in a queer relationship--it’s just not a gay one.  They are two genderfluid beings who mostly present as male out of preference or convenience, surrounded by additional similar genderfluid beings who may present as male, or female, or both, or neither.  Their relationship is both romantic and asexual.

The fact that those ‘explicit milestones’ of kissing, sex, etc are absent from the show is in fact part of the point.  Not only does it make sense for the characters themselves, but it means so much to see a relationship that is obviously romantic, that is the center of an entire story, where the key turning point is about something other than sex or marriage.  A relationship can be super important, can be important enough to build an entire life around, without sex, without kissing, without wedding rings.  It’s so good to see one that is.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are aphobes and probably transphobes, whiny babies who don’t really care about representation, they just want their kind of representation.  (Please see above note about ad hominem attacks and logical fallacies.

There are a few points that everyone can agree on.  Crowley and Aziraphale follow the plotline of a romance, and their relationship is the core of this show.  They do not kiss, or have sex, or explicitly fall into any behavior that conventionally says, ‘yes, this human couple is dating’.  Other characters in the show mistake-them-for-dating, but those characters are always uninformed about the real complex nature of this relationship.

One side says: it all comes so close to being a thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting ourselves on screen.  Why promise and not deliver?  Why come so close and then shy away?  Aziraphale and Crowley, with all they are to each other (with Aziraphale’s shop in Soho and his time in a discrete gentleman’s club, with their so-religious families that will disown them or worse for this relationship, with everything they are an have been) are a metaphor for gayness that refuses to commit past the point of metaphor and just admit it already, and it hurts.

The other side says: it has exactly hit the nail on the head of being a different thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting a different portion of ourselves onscreen.  It just so happens that the thing it’s reflecting is by nature a little confusing and undefined, is close to the kind of queerness you’re expecting without getting there.  Crowley and Aziraphale (who’ve been alive for six thousand years, who have seen so many different ways humans love each other and swear to each other, who are not bound by our conventions or definitions and maybe show us that we don’t have to be either) are a metaphor for nothing.  They parallel a lot of familiar narratives of a lot of kinds of queerness, without trying to be anything but what they are.

Two sides, everybody so starved for representation that they’ll grab for it and name-call and scrabble desperately when they almost get it.  One relationship.  One divided fandom.

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Look, it is obvious by this point that this is a case of everybody fighting over our one specific instance of representation because there isn’t enough to go around, right?  If gay relationships were more common throughout fiction, it wouldn’t be so important that Aziraphale and Crowley were among them.  If ace relationships and alternative relationship dynamics were portrayed as frequently or given as much weight as sexual ones, it wouldn’t be so important.

And it’s not just about what’s important, it’s about what’s noticed.  If there were gay relationships--or if there were ace relationships, or other kinds of queer relationships!--all over fiction, then being explicit would matter so much less.  It is important, in this world, that queer relationships in fiction announce what they are out loud, because in this world they are so often brushed over or ignored.  They have to clear a much higher bar than conventional straight, sexual relationships.  If there were more representation in the world, everybody would be primed to notice Aziraphale and Crowley as a romance.  We wouldn’t need it spelled out--one, because we’d already know, and two, because it wouldn’t be such a big deal if somebody else didn’t.

Of course, there’s more representation these days than there used to be--little dribs and drabs of it all over.  There’s just enough out there that somebody can say, ‘look, we’ve seen basic gay romances, let us have this thing here, let us have this nuance’.  And meanwhile half the audience (who may be gay, or bi, or ace, or transgender or genderqueer themselves in all sorts of ways) is gaping, because...okay, maybe gay romance exists in some places, in corners, but there’s still so little of it.

We’re all living on crumbs.  It’s hard to appreciate nuance when you’re just a few steps past starving.  It’s hard to appreciate the grace of ambiguous and open endings when you’ve seen them twisted against you again and again, and you just want something that’s yours.

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Here’s another thing, an important thing.  Humans are used to seeing patterns and we’re used to seeing stories.  It can be very hard to tell whether a storyteller is trying to give us something new and strange told well, or something more familiar told badly--especially if we’re used to seeing the familiar thing told badly.

And: if the audience cannot tell whether an author is portraying Thing A well or Thing B badly, at a certain point it doesn’t really matter which it is.

And: sometimes the only way to tell if a story is trying to show you Thing A and succeeding or Thing B and failing, is to look around the story to see if you can spot Thing B done right, anywhere else.

In other words: How do you make a difference between an audience that is collectively sure that Crowley and Aziraphale are some specific, slightly-hard-to-define but very definitely queer thing (and sometimes being hard to define is an intrinsic part of queerness), versus an audience divided amongst themselves over whether or not they’re just a bad, cowardly approximation of ‘gay’?

You put actual, explicit gay somewhere else in the story.

And that’s where we run into problems.

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The problem with Good Omens the miniseries and how it does queer representation, how it does Crowley and Aziraphale and their romance, is the same problem that Good Omens the miniseries has across the board.  The problem is that half the writing team is gone, and so is half the story.

In the miniseries, Aziraphale and Crowley are, hands down, the main characters.  This is their story, and everyone else around them--Anathema and Newt, the Four Horsemen, Heaven and Hell, the Them, and even Adam himself--are just bit players.  I don’t fault Neil Gaiman for that, exactly.  I’m sure he did his best, and his best meant he poured the heart and soul of the story into these two characters and the relationship they share.  He gave them as much richness and depth as he possibly could.  (That’s part of why we all love them enough to fight over them.)  But the fact is, the rest of the story around them suffered.

Adam and the Them, Anathema and Newt, even Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell--humans, all of them, and very much the people who actually stop the apocalypse.  Considering the way Anathema kick-started Adam along his path towards Armageddon, they’re even the people who started the apocalypse.  Very, very fundamentally, Good Omens is a story about how humans don’t need heaven or hell--not to be evil, not to be good, and not to keep being human.  Except that the miniseries wrote the humans off to the side, and that cracked things a little.  In some places, it cracked things a lot.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the miniseries.  I love Crowley and Aziraphale at the heart of it, and the richness and depth of their relationship.  I love the story about how an angel and a demon are so very very human, even though they think they aren’t.

But it’s a story that only works with enough of a contrast.  We can only appreciate Aziraphale and Crowley as an angel and a demon who’ve become very-nearly human if we know what the differences are in the first place.  We can only appreciate their similarities if we see enough humans acting the same way: with want, with fear, with desire, with pettiness, with love.

The difficulty with the miniseries is that we see a great deal of Crowley and Aziraphale being full of very, very human emotions and reactions.  We see their worry and desperation and how much they care about each other.  Nothing we see from any other character in the whole show comes close.

Anathema lives a life in service to (a prophecy, not a Host, but is it so different?) a thing she doesn’t quite understand and nobody can explain to her, that she just has to trust--but we see Aziraphale deal with Gabriel and Heaven again and again, and we see so little of Anathema’s fear and doubt.  Newt is fired from (a nothing job, not God’s endless love) a world he vaguely understands but isn’t good enough for, and finds himself in a strange, confusing place where he’s probably smarter than his boss and everything smells a bit weird and it might technically be his job to hurt people except maybe he doesn’t want to--and we get none of it, compared to what we see of Crowley, six thousand years post-Fall.

Adam is human and not-human, full of powers that can bend the world around him to his whim, that can make things how he thinks they should be.  He decides not to, because of love and selfishness, because he’d rather be human.  He makes the exact same decision Aziraphale and Crowley make.  We just get so much less of the weight of it.

The thing about telling the story this way is that it turns Crowley and Aziraphale into the only real people in the whole show, with everyone around them in silhouette and abstract.  It stops being a story about how this angel and this demon are, effectively, exactly the same as everyone else--oh sure they’ve got some differences, powers and abilities and age and shape-shifting (and mutable gender, and vague non-existent sexualities), but hell, people in general are full of differences in all of those things anyway.  

All of a sudden, the differences between baseline human and celestial being start to feel weird and cheap.  If Aziraphale and Crowley are the only real people in the story, and they’re not reacting in the way most people would react--it’s not just because they’re individuals, with specific individual wants and needs and reactions.  It’s either a statement or a weird error.  If the only real people in the story aren’t people, everything starts to fall just a little bit apart.

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And so we come back around to sexuality once again.

A deeply, deeply unfortunate side effect of the Good Omens miniseries fleshing out Heaven and Hell and neglecting the humans is that all of the queer content--all of the nonbinary characters, our one shining non-heterosexual relationship, all of it--went to characters who were not human.  It makes so much sense, on one hand.  That’s where all the new depth came from, so of course that’s where all the new queerness went.  And why should non-human characters subscribe to human definitions of gender and sexuality?  Of course they wouldn’t.

Because, right: the idea that sexuality is in and of itself a primarily human thing, which most non-humans lack but some experiment with for fun (and that is Word of God and that is explicit in the text of the show and the book)--that idea’s not actually inherently bad.  The idea that sexuality is a requirement of humanity, that it comes part and parcel with love and ‘becoming more human’ (which is, after all, the best thing you can do according to show or book)--that idea is in fact bad.  But if all of your desire for sex goes to your humans AND all your queerness goes to your non-humans...that gets real unfortunate, real real fast.

The problem is, just like the show neglected to give the full depth of human characterization and emotion to its actually human characters, it failed to give them the full depth of human sexuality and gender, too.

The humans in Good Omens are painfully heterosexual.  It’s not simply that the Newt/Anathema and Tracy/Shadwell relationships are straight--it’s that they fall into place as though straight is the only choice.  Both relationships are so very much a picture of no other options.  Anathema and Newt are facing the end of the world, about to probably die, and also have been prophecied to get together under these circumstances for centuries.  Shadwell and Madame Tracy are both very deeply alone, and getting older, and if they want to be anything but alone their only choice appears to be each other.  These four people appear to default their way into traditional m/f relationships, whether it’s falling into (under) bed or moving to the country to retire together.  They hit all of those ‘explicit markers’ we were talking about before, and they don’t do it with emotional build-up.  They don’t do it with any real exploration of the individuals involved or why they’re making these choices.  There’s barely any acknowledgement that these are choices.

The thing is, gay humans do exist in the world of Good Omens!  We spend time is Soho, and we hear about a very specific extremely gay gentleman’s club, and we know it’s there, somewhere, hidden.  We just never get to see it.  Crowley and Aziraphale (who are our only touchstone to those queer areas, which the other human characters never seem to encounter) are the Only Queers In The World.  And it sucks, and I think it happened completely by accident.

I suspect that the lack of human queerness was literally just a side-effect of the lack of human anything--Crowley and Aziraphale are in fact the only queers in the world specifically because they’re the only people in the world.  None of the already-existing human characters were given enough additional development to add much of anything, including any new gay.  The human world of Tadfield and the Witchfinder Army wasn’t given enough development to make it worth creating any new characters, let alone queer ones.

It just means that, all of the sudden, straightness gets accidentally equated with every single non-child human we spend more than two lines with, and queerness becomes exclusively the province of demons and angels.  That’s really bad.  It’s one of those unfortunate accidents that happens sometimes, because the world ain’t perfect, but it’s pretty not great.  And that’s where our problems come from.

In particular that’s where this current debate comes from, because if sexuality = human and human = straight, and nonhuman = asexuality and queerness = nonhuman, then we’ve accidentally said some pretty damning things about humanity and equated all queerness with lack of sexual desire all at the same time.  And it’s subtle, and it’s easy to miss, because it’s all about a lack of queer humans that’s all mixed in with the lack of humans at all, but it feels off.  So we go looking for reasons and we go looking for scapegoats.  It’s so easy to fixate on and blame the only queer relationship (the only developed, real relationship) we get at all, writ huge and impossible-to-miss all over our screen, rather than all the invisible ones we don’t.

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Here’s what I take away from all of this: Crowley and Aziraphale are, in every real sense, the most important characters in the Good Omens miniseries, and their relationship is without doubt the most important relationship.  It’s a well-developed, believable relationship.  It’s neither a straight relationship, nor an explicitly sexual gay relationship.  It is a different thing all its own, a thing that does not easily fit conventional human labels, that may or may not include sex at some point but certainly does not require it to be devastatingly important.

And I like that.  I, me, personally, who would rather find a reason to feel heartened than a reason to feel angry, am really glad to see something so extremely not-straight at the emotional center of a story I care about.  That’s me.

In the absence of anything that is an explicitly sexual gay relationship, this nebulous complicated thing at the core of this story looks an awful lot as though it’s trying to be gay and not getting there all the way.  And that sucks.  And for a lot of people, that hits some very specific buttons that have been made tender over many years of stories that try to be gay and refuse to go there all the way.  The flaw, though, is in the contrast and the context around the relationship--not in the relationship itself.

Stories are hard.  Telling stories, and making sure that they get heard on the other end the way we want them to, is hard.  Figuring out why certain things resonate the way they do, why some people feel connected while others feel alienated when we’re just trying to make our point, is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

I don’t blame Neil Gaiman for not magically figuring out that this would happen with the story he was trying to tell, partially because I haven’t seen anybody else in this great big argument of ours notice it either.  He tried to tell a story that was similar to but distinct from a story a lot of people wanted, and he didn’t make it clear enough.  I still really like the story we got.  I like all the slightly-different fanfic versions, too.  I like liking things.  That’s me.

If you’re still mad, if you’re still hurt: legit.  That’s valid.  But I don’t think arguing over this one specific relationship, what it Should Be and Shouldn’t Be, is helpful.  

Basically: I don’t want to sit around getting angry at each other over why Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t get the same traditional markers of Happily Ever After as Newt and Anathema, as Tracy and Shadwell.  I want to know why those couples didn’t have to (didn’t get to) EARN their happily-ever-afters with all the feeling and wanting and fearing and deciding that Aziraphale and Crowley did.

[hexenmeisterer]

Comparing “The Ladies’ Man” to “A Likely Story”

Some collaborative due South meta 

Here’s what happens when two friends separated by lots of geography watch due South together over Skype, read ALL of truepenny’s meta, and then start jamming in a google doc about two episodes-- which differ drastically in tone but share a bunch of themes! (crossposted here on DW, which is a better place to comment if you wanna have an actual back-and-forth discussion.)

H is me and T is the inimitable @touchmycoat.

H: In “A Likely Story,” Ray is trapped in his ideas about his love interest (what’s her name again?). He cannot for the life of him tell when she’s lying, he can’t see her true motivations, he can’t know her. He’s just using her as a blank screen to project his internal conflicts onto. This is, as truepenny points out, a theme that due South returns to almost every single time it explores romance. How many episodes philosophize on the possibility of “love at first sight?” Off the top of my head, I’ve got “You Must Remember This,” “Victoria’s Secret,” “An Invitation To Romance,” and “Say Amen”…

As Huey and Dewey say in “Say Amen,”

“Well, you know the thing is, you can't really love someone until you know them.”  “Sure you can. The hard thing is to love them after you know them.”

T: The love interest’s name is Luann— Frannie’s actually the first person to name her, well into the episode. Luann’s not introduced to us, to Ray, to Fraser by name, relation, or even profession. We’re just left to assume she has a caretaking role for Mrs. Tucci based on her age and actions. The dialogue even (intentionally?) suffers from this unknowing; Ray says, “Look Fraser, I am very sorry for Mrs. Tucci’s loss, and I will make every effort to find the killer of her husband, but the fact remains she is a very beautiful woman.” The pronoun confusion just further highlights how much it doesn’t matter who Luann is, just that she is “a beautiful woman.” This issue goes from highlight to glaring headlights when the cut from EXT. CAR, EVENING to IN. STATION, DAY is done by their conversation just rolling over, and guess what they’re talking about? Well, Ray’s talking about sex, and how little of it they’re both getting.

H: The Lou Skagnetti story and Sword of Desire, which both show up multiple times throughout the episode, explore the (gendered) stories people build around romance. The ending scene specifically juxtaposes these two stories about love by putting their endings right next to each other. Ray and Luann have retreated from each other after a failed attempt at connection, and they both soothe their disappointment by turning to fantastical love stories.

This one, told between two men, out in the “wilderness” by a campfire:

“Lou Skagnetti looked at the princess who sat across the stone table in the stone cabin high atop Sulfur Mountain, and the princess smiled at him. And for a brief second, Lou Skagnetti could hear his own inner bell ring as though it were rung by a thousand angels. And he took his hand and he placed it over his heart, and Lou Skagnetti vowed that never again would he kill and eat another princess as long as he lived. . . unless, of course, she were covered in choke cherries and brown lichen and a sprinkling of dust -”

vs. this one, read in a comfortable bedroom (with the most floral bedspread ever invented), a story that one woman read aloud to another to help her sleep:

“Gabriella's chest heaved at the sight of him. His boldness made her feel like a true princess. As he came near her, she could feel the trembling of the deep inside her most secret place…”

Notice how they could almost be the same story told from different perspectives.

Fraser’s story, though, does not offer the same easy comfort Luann’s does. His story is a funny distraction, but it's also a dark mirror held up to romance. Fraser's status as an outsider means he knows different stories than Ray and Luann. This story shows the blood and guts of love. In the context of the episode, it gestures at how the theater of "love" often leads people to act in deeply un-loving ways towards each other; how it can get in the way of people even knowing each other. (“That's one dark story.” “Yes. It is.”)

Fraser has seen Ray use his position as a police officer to stalk his ex and now he’s seen him try to date a suspect. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s telling Ray a story where the protagonist has been “eating princesses.” The story’s not just an accusation, though; it’s a hopeful story, a humorous story; it’s told playfully and as an act of care, and it points to the possibility of true love in the future that is not based on violence.

T: I almost wish the show had the continuity to also let this moment comment explicitly on what Fraser couldn't get from Victoria. His love for her is so mired in guilt that he thinks himself deserving of all the violences she visits on his person. It's like, Ray is pre-Lou Skagnetti and Fraser is post-Lou Skagnetti; Ray needs to stop his violence and Fraser needs to pay for his violence. The same problem of failed recognition occurs on both sides of the story.

H: I love your point about Fraser being like Ray but somewhere further along in the accountability process.

In the "love-at-first-sight vs. true knowledge of a person" saga that is this show, there is one unexpected pair of people who know and love each other deeply after very little time spent together: Beth Botrelle and Ray Kowalski. They can see right through each other. They understand each other’s motivations— so not only can they tell when the other’s lying, but they can tell you exactly why. They are bound together through shared experience. And while their story is obviously not romantic, it is shockingly loving. Beth is willing to falsely confess to a murder she is unjustly accused of just to make Ray feel better, just to give him a real shot at moving on with his life after she dies. Ray is obviously willing to risk his job and his life to exonerate her, but he is also uniquely willing to admit his mistakes to her; he tells the truth exactly as it happened, and therefore sacrifices the easy self-justifications that have kept him functioning as a cop and as a person all these years.

(and, side note— how interesting is it that Beth of all people calls Ray “queer,” and his response is to laugh and nod?)

Beth does need to be saved from a death sentence, but she is emphatically not a damsel in distress (or a "princess"). She needs to save Ray as much as he needs to save her. Both of them know that their freedom is bound up in the other's.

T: So maybe in some ways this is Ray's post-Lou Skagnetti (I'm laughing as I write these words but bear with me). This is his Victoria, but antithetically; this is where he pays for the violence. Victoria was guilty and Fraser arrested her, Beth was innocent and Ray arrested her—but they both know, to some extent, that the arrests seemed immoral (Fraser in particular, where if they did actually sleep together, he’s fully abused his power as an officer of the law). Where Victoria wanted to destroy Fraser for it, Beth wanted to save Ray from it (she sought to alleviate his conscience by telling him she was guilty). But both Fraser and Ray had to be willing to destroy themselves and the roles they occupied for Victoria and Beth. The Fraser who is whole and the Victoria who seeks his destruction cannot coexist. And, to continue your reading of "Ladies' Man" as the keystone episode where Ray just really should not be a cop anymore, the Ray who is a cop and the Beth who is innocent/alive cannot coexist. There's something very interesting about these relationships between men and women that fail due to one or both of their placement in some kind of institution, because of one or both of their duties/supposed loyalties. Fraser's commitment to duty catalyzes the break between him and Victoria. Ray's abuse of his authority is no fucking good for Stella or Luann, and even when he succumbs to the ease of police authority he fucks over Beth.

Tying Ray and Fraser and Victoria back to “A Likely Story,” everybody, particularly Ray, speaks in projections; throughout the episode, Fraser is the mirror while Ray is the puppy, as in Ray doesn’t know the other puppy isn’t real, so he’s snarling and barking at the mirror, who is merely the medium through which the reflection is transposed.

H: “FRASER IS THE MIRROR AND RAY IS THE PUPPY” WHAT THE FUCK I LOVE THIS IMAGE. IT IS ABSURD AND TRUE. YOU ARE BRILLIANT. Please, expand upon this point.

T: This one particular projection:

Ray: “Let me see if I got this right, Fraser. Luann is a beautiful woman, therefore she must be bad. And since she's a really beautiful woman, that means she's got to be really bad. Is that how it goes inside your brain?”

Of all the projections, Fraser most clearly calls this one out for what it is: “Are you sure it is my brain we are talking about?” Funny, since this is the one projection that fully echoes Fraser’s hangups about Victoria. Vecchio’s line from “Letting Go” seems resonant: “Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.” But this is clearly about Ray: his low sense of self-worth makes him look for flaws in women he believes are “beautiful” and out of his league.

H: Yes!! They're both backed into these low-self-esteem corners with regards to romantic relationships: they’re both thinking, "there's something wrong with me." Ray projects that outwards (“what’s wrong with this woman?”), but Fraser does a slightly different thing with it: “if she's into me, she must be operating on an incomplete set of data.” Fraser knows that people think he's attractive, but also thinks that they can't see/know him enough to love him in a real way. I think that's why he was so INTO Victoria-- she knew he did bad things and wanted him anyways! And she, to his mind at the time, was clear-headed about what kind of punishment he deserved for his wrongdoing. There's something more comforting about that than waiting for the other shoe to drop.

T: Both “A Likely Story” and “Ladies’ Man” are about women that Ray Kowalski has wronged, and both end with Ray apologizing—very sincerely—to the women. Fundamentally, I love that as a narrative choice.

H: Yes. Apologize, man. (Apologize and quit your job. I think these two episodes lay out a really compelling case for exactly why Ray does not go back to being a cop post-COTW.)

To summarize:

Ray is a human-shaped projector. He can’t readily name his feelings, but they do warp his perceptions of reality and he does act them out. "I don't know what I want till I see what I do." -Ray Kowalski in The Teeth of the Hydra by Resonant.

This is terrible news for everyone involved when you're a cop!

These episodes both deal with the nature of love-- its relationship to truth and to police work. “A Likely Story” shows the burdensome trappings of heterosexual, romantic love, which in this case serve to obfuscate the truth; “The Ladies’ Man” shows an intense kind of "true love" between a man and a woman that has nothing to do with romance or sex and everything to do with solidarity and truth-telling.

T: And 4, we can absolutely implicate Fraser, at least thematically, in something every step of the way, el oh el.

[illbefinealonereads]

Blog tour! I’m offering you information and an excerpt from Out Now by Saundra Mitchell.

Out Now: Queer We Go Again! By Saundra Mitchell On Sale: May 26, 2020 Inkyard Press YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Diversity & Multicultural | YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Romance/LGBT 9781335018267; 1335018263 $18.99 USD 416 pages

A follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash prom…aliens run from the government…a president’s daughter comes into her own…a true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencer…a selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershops…skateboards and VW vans…Street Fighter and Ares’s sword: Out Now has a story for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page! This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Now-Queer-We-Again/dp/1335018263 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-now-saundra-mitchell/1133810272 IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335018267 Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Out-Now/Saundra-Mitchell/9781335018267?id=4861510030088 AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/out-now/id1481649552 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Saundra_Mitchell_Out_Now?id=0SeyDwAAQBAJ

Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture deliverer and a layout waxer. She's dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine series, the upcoming novelization of The Prom musical, and the editor of Defy the Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at www.saundramitchell.com.

Author website: wwww.saundramitchell.com Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Saundra-Mitchell/164136390442617 Twitter: @saundramitchell Instagram: @smitchellbooks Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52172088-out-now

Excerpt:

KICK. PUSH. COAST. By Candice Montgomery

Excerpted from OUT NOW: Queer We Go Again! Edited by Saundra Mitchell, used with permission by Inkyard Press, © 2020 by Inkyard Press.

 Every day, same time, same place, she appears and doesn’t say a word.

Well, she doesn’t just appear. She takes a bus. You know she takes a bus because you see her get off the bus right in front of 56th Street, just in front of the park where you skate.

You know she takes a bus and gets off right in front of the park at 56th Street because you are always at the park, wait-ing to catch a glance of her.

She—her appearance—is a constant. Unlike your sexuality, all bendy like the way your bones got after yesterday’s failed backside carve.

Bisexualpansexualdemisexualpanromanticenby all bleeding bleeding-bleeding…into one another.

That drum of an organ inside your chest tells you to just be patient. But now, here you are and there she is and you can’t help yourself.

She’s beautiful.

And so far out of your league.

You’re not even sure what she does here every day, but you probably shouldn’t continue to watch her while trying to nail a Caballerial for the first time. Losing focus there is the kind of thing that lends itself to unforgiving injuries, like that time you broke your leg in six places on the half-pipe or the time you bit clean through your bottom lip trying to take down a 360 Pop Shove It.

You’re still tasting blood to this very day. So’s your skate-board. That one got split clean in half.

She looks up at you from underneath light brown lashes that seem too long to be real. She reminds you of a Heelflip. You don’t know her well but you imagine that, at first, she’s a pretty complicated girl, before you get good enough to really know her. You assume this just given the way her hair hangs down her back in a thick, beachy plait, the way yours never could.

Not since you chopped it all off.

That’s not a look for a lady, your mom says repeatedly. But you’ve never been very femme and a few extra inches of hair plus that pink dress Mom bought you won’t change that.

You hate that dress. That dress makes you look like fondant. Someone nails a Laserflip right near where you’re standing and almost wipes out.

Stop staring. You could just go introduce yourself to her.

But what would you say?

Hi, I’m Dustyn and I really want to kiss you but I’m so confused about who I am and how am I supposed to introduce myself to you if I can’t even get my label right, oh, and also, you make me forget my own name.

And in a perfect world, she would make eyes at you. She’d make those eyes at you and melt your entire fucking world in the way only girls ever can.

Hi, Dustyn, I’m in love with you. Eyelashes. All batting eye-lashes.

No. No, the conversation probably wouldn’t go that way. Be nice if it did though. Be nice if anything at all could go your way when it comes to romance.

You push into a 360 ollie while riding fakie and biff it so bad, you wish you possessed whatever brain cells are the ones that tell you when to quit.

If that conversation did go your way, on a realistic scale, she’d watch you right back. You would nail that Caballerial.

Take a break. Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe. Try some-thing else for a sec.

Varial Heelflip. Wipe out.

Inward Heelflip. Gnarly spill.

Backside 180 Heelflip. Game, set, match—you’re finished. That third fail happens right in front of her and you play it off cool. Get up. Don’t even give a second thought to your battle wounds. You’re at the skate park on 56th Street because there’s more to get into. Which means, you’re not the only idiot limping with a little drug called determination giving you momentum.

Falling is the point. Failing is the point. Getting better and changing your game as a skater is the point. Change.

But what if things were on your side? What if you’d stuck with that first label? What if Bisexual felt like a good fit and never changed?

Well, then you’d probably be landing all these 180s.

If bisexual just fit, you’d probably have been able to hold on to your spot in that Walk-In Closet. But it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit which kind of sucks because at Thanksgiving din-ner two years ago, your cousin Damita just had to open her big mouth and tell the family you “mess with girls.” Just had to tell the family, a forkful of homemade mac and cheese headed into said mouth, that you are “half a gay.”

That went over well. Grams wouldn’t let you sit on her plastic-lined couches for the rest of the night. Your great-uncle Damian told her gay is contagious. She took it to heart.

No offense, baby. Can’t have all that on my good couches. You glance up and across the park, memories knocking

things through your head like a good stiff wind, and you find her taking a seat.

Oh.

Oh, she never does this. She never gets comfortable. She’s changing things up. You’re not the only one.

Maybe she plans to stay a while.

You love that she’s changing things up. You think it feels like a sign. It’s like she’s riding Goofy-Foot today. Riding with her right foot as dominant.

The first time you changed things up that way, you ended up behind the bleachers, teeth checking with a trans boy named Aaron. It felt so right that you needed to give it a name.

Google called it pansexual. That one stuck. You didn’t bother to explain that one to the family, though. They were just starting to learn bisexual didn’t mean you were gay for only half the year.

You pop your board and give the Caballerial another go.

It does not want you. You don’t stick this one either.

If pansexual had stuck, you’d introduce yourself to the beautiful girl with a smaller apology on your tongue. Hi, I’m Dustyn, I’ve only changed my label the one time, just slightly, but I’m still me and I’d really love to take you out.

And the beautiful girl would glance at your scraped elbows and the bruised-up skin showing through the knee holes in your ripped black skinny jeans. She’d see you and say, Hi, small, slight changes are my favorite. And then she’d lace her bubble-gum-nail-polished hand with yours.

But you changed your label after that, too. It was fine for a while. Your best friend, Hollis, talked you through the symp-toms of demisexuality.

No wonder holding the beautiful girl’s hand seems so much more heart-palpitating than anything else. A handhold. So simple. Just like an ollie.

You take a fast running start, throwing your board down, and end up on a vert skate, all empty bowl-shaped pools that are so smooth, your wheels only make a small whisper against them.

A whisper is what you got that first time you realized sex was not for you. Not with just anyone. This was…mmm, probably your biggest revelation.

It was like you’d been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenly—a vegetable!

Tic-tacking is when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other. It’s a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and know-ing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.

You are not a girl at all. You are just…you.

That.

That one’s sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.

You make one more attempt, which probably isn’t super wise because you are so close to the spot where she’s sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but she’ll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.

You coast by.

The friction vibrates up through your bearings and you know you’re going too fast because you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely, oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.

And you hate that word. Control. You hate that word be-cause it is so very rare that you have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your heartbeat when you’re around your beautiful girl.

But then you do.

You gain control. And you nail that Caballerial.

And the three guys who’ve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.

And you’re smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one. You’re smiling so hard you don’t notice the someone standing behind you.

Beautiful girl. You don’t even want to control your smile here.

“You did it,” she says.

[invinciblerodent]

Propositioned by the Billionaire Moose - A moose(!!!) shifter romance liveblog (Part IV)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4. We’re making our way through this, aren’t we.

And let me take the time to say this now- I read a couple reviews on Goodreads because that’s just the kind of person I am, and…. I’m honestly shocked how many good things people have to say about this? Both the book, and the author’s other works? Because this.... is objectively pretty bad. Or blah at best. 

Makes me sad for the people who read this and thought it was good, because to be quite honest with you guys… to have your baseline for quality be this, you have to be reading some truly garbage books.

And I’m not saying that in reference to the genre, I LOVE me a good romance, I have read many, and it’s actually super easy to get me all tingly and blushy on the inside. This is just bad.

(Seriously, the last thing I read where I remember feeling all fluttery was when -spoiler alert- the romantic subplot in Artemis reached its end, and there was almost ZERO buildup there. They just… were friends, did some stuff together, and then kissed. And that was it. That was enough to make me like them, because the protagonists weren’t charmless dingbats with no communicative ability whatsoever.)

Okay. Chapter 10. Here we go. Let’s get. Through. This. (So I can start reading things I actually want to read. Yet another sidebar, the biggest downside of working in a bookstore isn’t that my manicure chips literally on day 1, but that every day, I end up coming home with a note in my pocket of like…. six titles of books I wanna check out. Upside, since it’s all Hungarian translations, most of the time anything with a foreign author is already available in English online, heeeeeeeeeey)

(For reference, right now the tabs of books I have open are this, a Hungarian erotic novel [the author of which recently came to our store for a signing [and he was super nice so I wanted to see his work- not impressive but decent, and I enjoy it more knowing that the dude is just generally a real Quality Person and tbqh hot as hell but you didn’t hear that from me], A Handmaiden’s Tale, and a book about clinical depression. I am a very colorful person with varied interests.)

To kick things off, I’m starting to think that after writing, the author just did a search-replace, and changed every time they said “female” to “feline��. I sure am starting to read the two in the same voice. (Which is to say, every time I see “female” as a noun, in my head I do that shrill, exaggerated voice Jim Sterling does when he says it, like “FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEmale”. FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEline.)

Oh, and Melanie apparently doesn’t understand the concept of why someone would want to open a door for her, just out of courtesy. Which, okay, I don’t require it either, and it does make me feel kind of eeeeengh inside, but I mean it, this woman literally does not understand it. And if that was an attempt at making her come off as a feminist, it backfired, and ended up making her come off as startlingly ignorant. She should have just said “I don’t need/want it, thanks”, and I would have respected her a lot more than I do for “uhhhhhh why would you do that????? I can open the door too????? Why is that considered polite???????” and getting back in the car to be mischievous, and by that I mean waste my fucking time.

She also makes holding hands sound like he’s dragging her across the courtyard, and boy, if that ain’t accurate. (tbh, ten chapters in, and this guy has yet to properly turn into a moose. At this point I want an Animorphs-style transformation that vividly describes the agony of his innards liquefying. I want explicit details, my man. I want to read about his digits fusing together into a hoof.)

Anyway, they have a butler who calls him “Master Bryce” and her “his lady friend” (even though she’s supposed to be his fiancée, not his gal-pal), and for a couple chapters there I legit forgot what his name was.

Melanie is beside herself because it’s all so beautiful and luxurious. And not to be a party pooper, but I’m also a poor fuck speaking here, and that’s obnoxious. Both the four paragraphs of descriptions of his lavish wealth and her going gaga over it. Ew.

Anyway, Bryce is surprised that Chanice is Rory’s fiancée (which I called, like, five chapters ago) because he’s a big dumb idiot, and here comes Grandpa’s Smelltest. Hope she remembered to wear deodorant, I know how stinky cats can get.

Ah, delightful. Remind me why Bryce hasn’t told her shit yet? Like, I think he knows that she has no idea, so??????? Why doesn’t he tell her? Why did he not first transform in front of her to make sure she believes him? Because if HE can tell and HE knows it can’t be faked, why does he not demonstrate that she can trust him???????

Then again, what am I doing, wanting proper communication in a bad romance novel. What am I doing. Why do I not learn.

So all five of them proceed to engage in very hostile small talk with one another, and both she and Bryce mutter unfortunate things under their breaths. I guess it’s a match made in heaven, with how the both of them appear to have no filter. Lovely couple, shit-talking, out loud, in company.

I’m starting to really like this Rory character. At least he has some damn insight. Shame that the book is blatantly setting up some sort of murder-ploy against our lovely and not at all fucking immature hero, but whatever. Remind me to be surprised when Rory turns out not to be their cousin, and to attempt to murder Creepozoid.

Anyway, with that, a physical fight breaks out, and Grandpa Piss (because I sure as fuck am not calling an 80-something man Theo) just shrugs and literally says “boys will be boys” while his grandson and nephew pummel each other on the ground, and, appalled, Melanie….. leaves? She straight up walks out? I assume the other girl just kept eating because there is no mention of her, but... can we all agree that this is weird?

Like, does that sound like someone trying to sell being ready to marry one of them? Wouldn’t you worry about the person you love getting socked in the face? Or really, just, if you see a physical fight break out in a room where there are literally only five people, at least yell “stop” or something? Isn’t that natural? I thought it was?????????

So, she has the really bright idea to walk home, but he ends up following her in the car, slowing beside her, and growling at her to get in, but she’s being stubborn because reasons, but eventually, she realizes that walking alone in the woods at night is stupid, and gets in.

WHAT CHARM. OH YEAH, THE GUY WHO JUST INITIATED A FISTFIGHT OVER A FAMILY DINNER DURING WHICH HIS “FUTURE WIFE” WAS TO MEET HIS ONLY LIVING FAMILY. THAT GUY IS CHARMING BECAUSE HE SAID SOMETHING SEXIST.

Chapter 11 just switches POVs in the same scene, and I’ve gotta say my piece about this- I hate it when books do that. When they flip-flop between two perspectives within the same story. I hate that. It’s jarring as fuck. It’s okay when the chapters are long and, say, the story follows multiple threads (like in The Song of Ice and Fire) or multiple timelines (like in Broken Earth), but FOR GOD’S SAKE, if your protagonists are sitting in the same car, together, having a conversation, what is to be gained by switching which one of them we focus on? You want to show us what they’re thinking? THEN HAVE AN OMNISCIENT NARRATOR. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO STICK TO ONE PERSON, WHO SAID THAT YOU HAVE TO USE THIRD PERSON LIMITED. JEEZ.

Anyway. Getting sidetracked. That’s just a pet peeve of mine, and apparently tonight I’m very scatterbrained. This is not helping.

So Bryce’s perspective is just…. Inconsequential. He doesn’t really have interesting thoughts. He’s, like, thinking about how Melanie is Cool and Different because she’s repulsed by snobbery, and that that must mean she likes HIM as a person and not his money.

Personally, I don’t think there is much about this dude to like. He’s just… aggressive (as demonstrated), quick to anger, selfish (not only in his treatment of Melanie, but he also used the word “steal” regarding an inheritance he was never given, which made me wonder what makes him think it was his in the first place), and has no idea what the words “back off” mean. Again, red flags galore.

He also seems to get a boner every time he sees her.

I don’t get The Straights, man. I don’t know why you, the most likely straight female author, would project onto your characters that you want the dude you’re on a date with to be constantly thinking about sex, and not, say, getting to know you. I’m too queer for this shit, and I still like dudes too????????

Oh, and he also says that his grandpa might be spying on them, so he kisses her, I quote, “before she could protest”. Meaning that she intended to protest. Charming.

So they start making out on the porch anyway.

S I N C E W H E N

Does this author know that moose are prey animals? I know they’re huge and dangerous and are capable of killing bears and wolves and stuff, but THAT DOESN’T MAKE THEM FUCKING PREDATORS?????????

I mean, if he thinks of himself in the second sense, then yes, I can get behind it, but the first, nah. Nah son, you’re the hippo of the forest. The only reason you’re not actively hunted and eaten is because you’re big, and most predators in your habitat are simply not big enough to hurt you.

Maybe “moose” was another search-replace? Like maybe the author was going with a bear at first, and then decided that that would make the book 98% identical to five others, so she changed it to a moose in the last second?

Who knows.

The chapter ends with his phone ringing, and she rushes inside (maybe she should have been the deer, she seems to be fleeing from everywhere), and the caller telling him that the factory is on fire.

Which would make for a twist much more interesting, but with the end of the chapter we cut back to Melanie’s POV, and since she can’t sleep, that’s what we’re talking about. Not the factory that went up in a blaze for no particular reason, but the fact that this girl can’t sleep.

Eugh. So I had planned to stop there, but since we’d be leving on a weird note, here’s. Chapter 12. The nurse (Martha? Lots of M-names here, I think the mom was something like Maizie or something like that, makes distinction hard) drugged Melanie’s mom and left. She worries through the night about not wanting to get involved with Bryce, and in the morning, he shows up covered in soot. They literally skipped the most interesting thing that has happened in this book so far in order to spend two pages reiterating what had already been said like four times.

I’m as bored as you are.

And instead of going home to shower and sleep (which is what I would do if I had been wearing my uncomfortable suit from yesterday, while dealing with a factory fire all night), he comes to her house to ask her out for lunch. Because nothing is sexier than a picnic with a stinky, messy, unwashed man who has not slept all night, I guess. At least outside the stink won’t be obvious?

The next exchange between her and her mother, I have to show to you guys so you’ll know I’m not exaggerating.

Keep in mind, Melanie is supposed to be 22. (I swear, her age fluctuates WILDLY between, like��� 15, and 45.)

See what I mean when I say this woman is a cartoon character? What human being talks like this? To her ADULT DAUGHTER? This is either a case of the author being too hamfisted to intentionally create an unlikable character (they are quite capable of making it happen on accident, given our dashing hero), or this character grappling with some… much deeper issues. Like, even if she thinks Melanie isn’t mature enough to date (AT TWENTY FUCKING TWO YEARS OLD), yelling abuse at her is… not the way to handle this?

And yeah, I still don’t care for Melanie as a character, but man, I can’t help but feel offended on her behalf.

Also the mother chooses now to say that Melanie’s father didn’t leave them, but that it was her who grabbed an infant, and left her husband because she suspected that he was cheating. Allegedly. At this point I find even that questionable because this is Just That Kind Of Book™ where the female guardian is unhinged and irrational, and the man will SURELY turn out to have been perfect and right all along.

Anyway, she runs out, and they drive to the woods they first met.

One more annoying thing, and this isn’t specific to this book but I’ll say it anyway- I don’t know how being a shifter would work, not that I think about that a lot, but listen. If you literally had the impulse to react to anything like an animal… I don’t believe that these High Profile Bachelors™ with such piss poor impulse control could ever achieve the status among normal humans that they appear to have. Like, she wants to literally yowl, as a human, because they went to a woods she went to as a lynx and got attacked. How is the guy who INITIATES A FISTFIGHT OVER A FAMILY DINNER going to be a CEO? How? How has he yet to go moosey and tackle half the crew?

I mean I’ll believe it, but only if I……… moost.

Back to the story, she doesn’t want to go to the woods because duh, wolves, and this happens:

I refuse to engage. I’ll just plop this here, and move on.

Also, please stop treating your weird impulses and animal persona as if it was a person separate from you.

This is still not sexy. Or cute. She’s playing will-they-won’t-they with herself, and it’s not cute. These dumb games are still what I consider to be Straight People Bullshit, and they make me sad for the readership and what kind of infuriating, unhealthy relationships they might have been in.

Glad to announce that he’s finally about to tell her that he’s a shifter too and that he knows that she is, btw. Which, yay. Only took him half the book. Call me the Cassandra of Romance because I fucking called it one chapter ago.

I’m sorry, I’m still not over the moose thing. It’s the sparkly vampire reveal all over again. Like it’s supposed to be frightening, but instead it’s just goofy. “I’m the moose” is just GOOFY. Luckily, Melanie seems to share my amusement.

Also, flock of meese.

Anyway, that’s chapter 12, and it was quite enough for now. Next time, we’ll have a real fun time running around the forest. I hope. Idk, this one ends with him tackling her, so really who knows if I’m gonna have a fun time.

The next part can probably be expected… on saturday the 9th. Take care of yourselves, don’t let the weremeese bite you.

[hoodlessmads]

Bloom Into You Series Personal Thoughts (Whoops It’s Way Too Personal)

When I discover a new series that I really like, I tend to become obsessive. I have an obsessive personality, or something almost bordering on ADD where I can find it extremely difficult to even pay attention to people talking to me or to focus on or care about just about anything, but when the one thing comes along, it’s all I think about for like 72 hours straight. So that happened with Bloom Into You, and I want to wait a while until the initial honeymoon phase wears off, maybe even until post-series, before I really sit down and write a detailed analysis of it. I only sat down to watch the first episode of the anime like two weeks ago.

But the stories that I obsess over rarely have nothing to do with what’s going on in my real life at the time, and Bloom Into You is no exception.

I sat down and started watching it because I had heard it was one of the standout anime of the season, because I wanted a cute innocent romance, and because it was notable as one of the only positively represented queer anime I had seen in a while. As a huge advocate for LGBTQ characters and stories in media, I was highly intrigued. And it’s true that the love story at the core of it all is incredibly precious and adorable and it turns my heart to mush.

But what I got out of it was much deeper and more personally affecting than I signed up for. And to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Most people are freaking out about Bloom into You because lesbians, and I don’t blame them. Lesbians in anime, positively represented, with wholesome and non-fetishized relationships. That’s huge and it more than deserves to be celebrated. Loudly. But for me, it wasn’t really that, persay. I’ve never identified as a lesbian or even as someone who likes girls. I’ve always said I was straight, because it’s easy, but I’m not convinced that’s the whole truth either. For me, Bloom Into You hits close to home because of the aromanticism of its main character and the inner torment that she faces because of it.

Speaking with complete transparency, I don’t think I’ve ever had romantic feelings for anyone. And any sexual feelings I’ve ever had towards anyone were limited at best. I just really don’t know. On top of that, I took an SSRI for over four years while I was in college, which managed to mute both my emotions and my sex drive even more than they already were. And having recently finally gone off them, I still can’t tell what’s the meds and what’s me.

At some points in the last four years, and even now, I finally got to a place of inner peace about it. I was like Maki. I accepted that I didn’t experience those feelings and I was totally fine with that—I mean, sure, it sucked a little, but think of all the bullshit I would never have to deal with. I wasn’t interested in anyone like that or in relationships like that and that suited me just fine.

At other points, I wasn’t like Maki at all. I distinctly remember one point early on in my college experience where I realized that I just wasn’t feeling it in general, any of it, and found myself curled up on the floor of my dorm, alone, sobbing over the fact that I would never experience romantic or sexual attraction. I did all sorts of research on asexuality and aromanticism. Is this normal? I would ask myself. Is it normal to be ace and aro and for it to still hurt this much?

In chapter 39, Bloom Into You posits that, perhaps, the distinction between truly ace people like Maki and people like Yuu is that, unlike Maki, Yuu wants to participate. Maybe that is true. It’s just an idea the manga suggests, not a statement. But since I want to participate, does that automatically mean I’m not aro? Am I like Yuu? I’m still not convinced that reality is so clear cut.

Bloom Into You is an incredibly emotional journey for me because it sees Yuu, someone who is either on the ace spectrum or emotionally repressed or a late bloomer or what have you, gradually fall in love in spite of it all. And getting to watch that process play out for her is so incredibly satisfying. Everyone experiences love differently and at a different pace—in many ways that is the inspiring message of Bloom. On the one hand, for Sayaka, love hits her like lightning. We see this at multiple points, whether it’s getting sucked in by that she-demon of a senpai or when she sees Touko for the first time at her opening ceremony and Sayaka reaffirms that she’s gay as shit. Then there’s Touko, who has never experienced attraction before, and again it may be due to lying somewhere on the ace spectrum or perhaps (I find this more likely) due to her crippling fear of getting emotionally involved with others or accepting affection from anyone. But when she meets Yuu, who she instantly recognizes she can open up to and has no reason to fear, it hits her quick. She has all the symptoms of infatuation.

Yuu’s love is different, though no less lovely. In chapter 40, Yuu explains to us and to Touko that she was always waiting for a love that wasn’t her own to just drop in on her, but that her own personal experience of falling in love was much different. She reached out and Touko was there. She chose her, because she was the one that she wanted to love. And that’s how love blossomed between them. It wasn’t instantaneous. It was slow, gradual, touch by touch, moment by moment, oftentimes painfully so. But Yuu’s love for Touko is just as real as Touko’s love for Yuu. It is so moving. It presents a concept of love that is active rather than passive, as something that the heart chooses rather than something that chooses the heart. (Touko even says this to Sayaka while sobbing in chapter 38.) It shows that love can come from anywhere, even from nothing. It makes me wonder, could I do the same? Could I, too, choose love?

Yuu goes on a journey from feeling nothing to feeling something, from apathy to heightened emotion, and watching that lately has forced me to confront the emptiness in my own life. Not just in terms of romance, but on all fronts. My reading of Yuu is that she is depressed…my reading of Touko is that she (is also very much depressed) has severe anxiety, among other things. Both of them struggle with crippling loneliness. But in this touching love story slash coming of age classic, they find and support each other.

I wish that for me the issue was something like, I’ve actually been gay this whole time, and I just didn’t want to admit it, so I convinced myself that I felt no emotions. And once I liberate myself I can go be freely gay and experience love at last. Problem solved. I wish I could just meet someone like Yuu meets Touko, be it a guy or a girl or whomever, and finally feel something. I wish sexuality was all it was.

But what terrifies me is that the reality is much more complicated.

That my issues run much deeper. Maybe all of the shit that’s happened to me over the course of my life has stunted my emotional and sexual development to the point that now it would be a miracle if I ever felt anything again. Maybe it was always there, it just needs to be unearthed from all of my crippling trust issues and emotional repression. Or maybe I really am bisexual and I just need to open myself up to the possibility of romance with women (though I’m not convinced that would be any more successful at making me feel something than my forays into romance with men). Or maybe it just plain isn’t there. Maybe I am truly asexual and aromantic and I have to learn how to live with how much it hurts, how lonely it feels.

At the end of the day, Yuu may lament that she’s never experienced love before, but she really is only like sixteen years old. And as the story goes, she does end up experiencing it.

But me, I’m already twenty-two, and it’s starting to look like it’ll never happen.

Alas, for all of these deep ass themes as well as in spite of them, Bloom into You is an utterly adorable love story that I deeply enjoy and that has touched my heart. Stolen my heart, rather. It is a feat of storytelling and character writing pulled off in a succinct 8-volume, 23 episode (I assume) run. It’s already notable for how well and how normalized it pulls off a wlw romance for an anime of its genre, and it could have stopped there and just given us typical cuteness and fluff and still been great.

Instead, it goes a step (or a mile) farther. Everything about it packs an emotional punch. It grips you and doesn’t let go. It presents a much more complicated view of romantic love between two people than one you expected or probably asked for. What even is love? What is love for you and what is love for me? What is love for Yuu and what is love for Touko? What is the concept of the self, anyway? How do you even begin to process and move beyond the painful past? How do you become you? It begs all of these questions but never quite provides solid answers, because there really aren’t any. All we know is that Yuu and Touko love each other, and it doesn’t matter how or why, and it’s beautiful.

[lainahastoomuchsparetime]

If you’re new around here, Things I’ve Read Recently is a series of posts I do that are basically mini-reviews of books that I either forgot to review, didn’t have enough to say for a full review, or just didn’t want to do a full post about for whatever reason.

I worked in a thrift store all summer and I had like a half hour lunch break. And doing nothing but eating alone is boring, so I read a bunch of magazines and then started bringing a book.

Now, I didn’t feel like taking notes while I ate, so I didn’t bring any review books. And I didn’t really feel like reading anything… you know, good. So I looked at my physical to-read stack and my book shelves and mostly found whatever looked trashiest. Never underestimate the power of good trash. Sometimes you need to read something that doesn’t make you think. At all.

So let’s talk about what I read this summer!

(Note: As I said, I didn’t take notes on any of these, so I don’t have notes to do content warnings. There’s like murder in most of them, and fatmisia and racism stuff. It’s trash, don’t be surprised by dumpster fires. Assume there’s no diversity in most of these.)

Killing Britney by Sean Olin

Published: July 1st, 2005 by Simon Pulse Genre: YA Thriller Binding: Paperback Page Count: 234 with no extras at all, actually Part of a series? Nope Got via: I wanna say thrift sale or yard sale. I own it and I don’t think I bought it online or anything.

Summary (from goodreads): Britney is the girl everyone loves to hate.

Ever since Britney transformed herself from freak-and-geek to the most popular girl at school, her life has been touched by tragedy. First it was her mom, who drowned on a family rafting trip. Then her hockey-star boyfriend, Ricky, was killed in a hit-and-run.

When the deaths continue to pile up, everyone fears for Britney. Sure she’s popular, blond, and fabulous.

But is that enough reason for someone to want to… kill her?

Thoughts: This was trash. It’s very clearly written by a man who had possibly never spoken to a teenage girl when he wrote this. Maybe because of the time period it was written plus that it’s written in third person, but it does have a kind of removed feeling. Which works for the “twist” ending (it’s a really predictable twist), but normally isn’t my favourite.

At the same time though it kind of worked for how my mindset was when I read it? I didn’t really want to connect to the characters. I just wanted to be entertained for a short period of time while I ate.

Also apparently this won an award for being appealing to reluctant readers, and I can totally see that. This was actually recommended to me by a friend like fifteen years ago. (I can remember that, but I can’t remember where I put my tweezers. Why is my brain like this?) That friend wasn’t a huge reader, but apparently liked this and thought I would.

Well, friend, fifteen years later, you weren’t wrong! Five dumpsters out of five.

(No, I’m kidding, I’m not rating these.)

The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate

Published: November 12th, 2009 by Razorbill Genre: YA Thriller Binding: Paperback Page Count: 235 plus an excerpt for a book by a different author and an add for the Kissing List. Part of a series? Nope. Got via: I think I actually bought it from amazon.

Summary (from goodreads): All it takes is one fatal mistake…

High-school beauty Natalie Hargrove has spent years plotting to become prom queen. She’s got just what it takes: popularity, glamour and ruthless ambition.

When someone threatens to overturn her perfect plan, Natalie needs to take control. So she convinces her boyfriend Mike to help play a prank on her nemesis, Justin… one that goes terribly wrong, and Justin ends up dead.

Natalie is plunged into a sea of secrets, shame and scandal.

Because it turns out there’s one thing even Natalie Hargrove can’t command – and that’s fate…

Thoughts: This was also trash! Not my favourite trash of the bunch here, but it was good enough for what it was. I actually thought the setting of this was really interesting. It’s set in… Charleston. I don’t know where that is. One second.

So it’s set in South Carolina! And takes place around Mardi Gras and has a whole bunch of southern high school traditions that I wasn’t really aware of. Do you remember that book I read last year, Ruined? It kind of reminded me of that, but, like, trashy CW teen show content instead of a ghost story.

Seriously with how popular Fallen was I’m surprised this was never made into a terrible movie. It’d be kind of fun to watch, honestly. Lots of teen drinking and sex, some murder, lots of drama, all that jazz. Not my favourite, but it worked for when I was reading it.

Traveling On into the Light: and Other Stories by Martha Brooks

Published: September 1st, 1994 by Groundwood Books Genre: Contemporary YA Short Story Anthology Binding: Hardcover Page Count: 146 plus an about the author Part of a series? No, but one of the stories was expanded into a book called Being With Henry Got via: I have no idea. I’ve had it forever, and there are not library marks or anything.

Summary (from goodreads): The miracle of unexpected connections and small victories that enlarge and transform shines forth in this haunting collection.

Here are teenagers on the brink of discovery: Jamie, who comes to understand that the lost can be found in unexpected ways when he goes looking for his dead father and finds a living memory instead; Laker, a runaway able to face his mother’s rejection because of the kindness of a total stranger; and Sidonie, who, threatened with the loss of the love that made her feel safe, discovers she can survive and face the unknown.

Out of alienation, isolation, and loss coms hope for the future in the support of friends, family, or lovers, the healing power of memory, or the sanctity of a safe place from which personal dragons can finally be faced.

Thoughts: This actually wasn’t trash. I grabbed it because it was in the box in my closet, and short stories seemed easy to read in small bursts. It’s actually pretty good. It’s older, so some of the stories obviously haven’t aged the best, but looking at it in the context of it being twenty-five years old (and most of the stories older), it’s not a big deal.

Also, like, props for this actually having queer characters? One of the characters in one of the stories has a father who has somewhat recently come out as gay and begun a new relationship. While normally that’s a plot I find a bit tiresome, for the early 90s, it’s handled pretty well.

I’m probably not going to keep this as I don’t feel any urgent need to reread it, but it was good enough.

Speaking of the 90s…

Obsessed by Jo Gibson

Published: This bind-up was released May 27th, 2014 by K-Teen Books which is a division of Kensington. We’ll talk about the original pub dates in the review. Genre: YA Thriller Binding: Paperback Page Count: 356 plus an excerpt from the next book, which we’ll talk about. Part of a series? This contains the books The Crush and the Crush II. Got via: Yard sale!

Summary (from goodreads): From master of suspense Jo Gibson comes two heart-stopping novels of romantic obsession–where the love never dies. It kills. . .

The Crush

Michael Barton is smart, sweet, gorgeous–the total package. Which is why some of the girls have decided to have a little contest. Whoever hooks up with Michael first will be the winner. There’s just one problem. One of the girls has been harboring a secret crush on Michael for years. She’ll do anything to be his girlfriend. She’ll play the game. She’ll win his heart. She’ll beat the competition. . .to death.

The Crush II

Michael Barton has experienced the dark side of love. He has survived the advances of a psychotic stalker. He has endured her deadly game of obsession. And now he is free from her web of lust and lies. But Michael has a surprise waiting for him. His secret admirer is still out there. Watching. Waiting. Plotting her next move. And if Michael thinks he can escape her this time, he’s wrong. . .dead wrong.

Thoughts: Originally the two books that make up this bind-up were published in 1994 by Zebra, specifically from their Scream Line. You may or may not know this, so let’s talk a bit about Zebra, because this is very interesting. Zebra, which is also a division of Kensington, mostly started as a romance publisher. In the 80s and 90s, however, they were quite successful publishing westerns and horror novels. They apparently (I can’t find too much information on it) had a line called “Scream”, which seems to have been somewhat similar to Point Horror line, but clearly not as popular.

The other interesting fact about this book? Jo Gibson is also known as Joanne Fluke, who writes the Hannah Swensen series. I find that so interesting. There’s also an excerpt for her… I think only non-cozy adult book, The Other Child, at the back of this book. Which is just such random advertising!

This is kind of trash, but it’s trash in a very specific way. Honestly, I did not realize that was such an old book when I started reading it, since I literally grabbed it because of the cover. It wasn’t until I got to a part about how cellphones were so expensive and unusual that I was like “what the hey?” and actually checked the publication date.

This is 90s teen pulp horror. You don’t go into this expecting a good book. The characters are barely characters, there’s a ton of 90s isms, the plot is ridiculously predictable, and it’s not remotely scary as an adult. You gotta think about being twelve and reading this with barbecue chips on a Friday night when you’re still young enough that staying up late on a Friday is a treat.

I also wanna just talk about these covers.

  Why are her fingernails so long?? That’s not a thing in the book at all. There’s absoluely no sense to it. I love it.

This was great! I’m actually gonna keep this and I would love to get my hands on the other bind-ups of her books. I’m super charmed by this.

Well, that was fun! What did y’all think of this round-up?

Peace and cookies, Laina

Things I’ve Read Recently (89): Stuff I read at lunch at my summer job that was mostly kind of trashy If you're new around here, Things I've Read Recently is a series of posts I do that are basically mini-reviews of books that I either forgot to review, didn't have enough to say for a full review, or just didn't want to do a full post about for whatever reason.