#queer delights

[thenearsightedmicroraptor]

Happy pride month time for queer delights!! I've got a total of one true family member left that I haven't disowned (my mom, shoutout to my mom!!) today we went on a trip and she had made sandwiches and she came with me off the road to look at all the million beetles and bugs I found. Small social circle is so so worth it, I love spending time with people who will be weird with me. I took pictures of bugs and she took pictures of trees!

^ some highlights

[moderndaypandora]

i recognize that simon and edwin meeting and parting in hell is narratively very good and provides closure for all. but imagine if simon had agreed to try and escape with edwin. and charles doesn't have time to really question it, because anybody who likes edwin is aces in his book and it's hell, they need to leave. (edwin, out of courtesy to their third companion, puts his plan to confess on hold until they've escaped.)

suddenly the edwin harem of "supernatural boys who all hate each other but are attracted to that negative rizz" gains another member, and at some point edwin is going to have to mention that simon was the boy who sacrificed him to hell.

the chaos. crystal's bitchy commentary. charles going from friendly smiling to clutching his cricket bat. niko's whispering "200k slow burn schoolboy rivals to lovers" with heart eyes. it'd be chef's kiss good. edwin fleeing to his books and praying that nobody, but especially not the cat king, finds him because there has been SO MUCH emotion already. hysterical.

[fernisfat]

i am once again full of soup 😌

[sunderwight]

Good Omens pulling the trigger on Aziracrow in actual factual live action canon while What We Do in the Shadows showrunners dither about the appropriateness of workplace relationships in their serial killer vampire orgy show is like watching Grandpa hit a button to activate nitros on his scooter and go whipping past the former street race champion to cross the finish line.

[beaft]

watched the first dr who special episode and while there were a few lines that made me cringe, i do think a little bit of cringe is a reasonable price to pay for seeing a black trans girl get a starring role in the longest-running and arguably the most famous sci-fi show in history

[monsamborabutterfly]

I can't handle this. It's too much for my poor sapphic ass

[queeringclassiclit]

Enjolras & Grantaire

from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

[frontierpsychopomp]

some birds

[starryalpacasstuff]

Fire (1996): A Mostly Spoiler Free Pitch Because You Should Watch It Immediately

It's time for "An Indian QL bulldozed past my expectations and I am reeling in awe", Part Two!

A few days ago, @neuroticbookworm told me about Fire, an old lesbian Indian movie she'd been wanting to watch. Me being me, I promptly tracked it down and settled in to watch it.

Very loosely based on the 1942 short story Lihaaf, the movie follows Sita, a newly wed bride who is settling in with her in-laws, which is how she meets Radha, who is married to her husband's brother. Both in unhappy marriages, they find solace and company with each other, quickly falling in love. Length: 1 Hour 40 Minutes TWs: Homophobia, C-word mentioned once, some depictions of domestic violence Release: 1996

The is almost entirely in English, and while one generally expects Bollywood movies to be in Hinglish, it's definitely a conscious choice here, which does make me wonder if the movie was supposed to be promoted to a greater international audience. You can find it here on Youtube, most of the (very few) Hindi dialogues have hard subtitles. I think it's also available on Prime? It wasn't available in India though, which is odd, but I didn't bother investigating. Let me know if anyone can figure anything out about this!

Going into this movie, I expected a melodramatic, emotional movie with a bittersweet tone. I did not expect a biting, incredibly engaging movie with excellent satire, symbolism, discussions of chastity culture, and an incredibly sweet, beautifully written romance. And I was certainly not prepared for how incredibly horny this movie is??? Both in subtle tension and overt sex scenes. There's also partial nudity, which again, completely unexpected. If you're going taboo, go taboo all the way I suppose. It's also very well directed, and while I'm not nearly as good at identifying details like that as some of the people on here, I did pick up on some colour coding and interesting framing. It's just overall packed with little details that I think a lot of us would have a field day analysing.

Honestly, I could talk about the cultural nuances in this movie for hours. Contrary to my assumption about the reasoning behind making the movie fully in English, the movie seems to rely on the viewer's understanding of North Indian customs to deliver a lot of it's messages, particularly with its satire, more on that below. While I don't think it's necessary to enjoy the movie, it definitely does add some meat to the story. Then again, I'm a biased party, so it'll be hard to determine just how many messages may be lost to someone from outside of India without someone to compare notes with (this is me shamelessly trying to get you to watch the movie). Honestly, I'd be 100% down to write a more detailed, spoiler-including post that goes into the implicit nuances if people are interested.

There's two main selling points for the movie; the incredible way it shuts down purity and chastity ideology and the absolutely adorable relationship between Radha and Sita. The movie is set on ruthlessly tearing down and emphasizing the ridiculousness of purity culture. A lot of the messaging is indirect and uses metaphors, but there's also several explicit scenes addressing the issue. It's one of the main themes of the movie and I'm almost convinced the real reason it's titled 'Fire' is the sheer number of burns it dishes out on this subject. The romance portion of this movie is one of the thing's that completely defied my expectations. It wasn't sad and dramatic, it was heartfelt and silly and adorable. There's several scenes of the two subtly flirting, laughing together and just being lowkey in love. But that's not to say there's no emotional depth—they're also there for each other and are quite vulnerable with each other.

The movie used a lot of metaphors, but my favourites were the almost satirical representation of mythological stories. In a religion as diverse as Hinduism, every holiday has two dozen stories behind it and each story has two dozen versions, so it's to be expected that you'll find a number of problematic or otherwise kind of ridiculous stories in the mix. The stories were told completely seriously, but the context of the movie highlights their absurd facets in a truly brilliant way. I'm not going to give too much away, but I will say, it was a delight to watch the juxtaposition of the myths and the storyline of the movie, particularly it's ties to the purity culture discussion. You'll understand when you watch it. I'm not turning this into a Hindu mythology lesson (yet) but one interesting tidbit is that Radha and Sita are both names of mythological figures; namely the partners of two of the most worshipped avatars of the god Vishnu: Krishna and Rama respectively. And I was overjoyed to find that their names do have relevance to the metaphors in the story, particularly Sita's.

When the movie was first released, there were massive protests against it, I'm talking hundreds of people storming into theatres to destroy them and drive away audiences. I don't know what to say here beyond this, but what I will say is that I think Fire is an amazing movie that absolutely does not deserve to be lost to the sands of time. I hope you give it a shot, and if you do, tag me in any posts you make about it!

Tagging people who seemed interested in recs from my last post, let me know if you'd rather I not tag you!

@lurkingshan @impala124 @bengiyo @letgomaggie @winnysatang

@watertightvines @nutcasewithaknife @blorbingqls @twig-tea

@waitmyturtles @cryingatships @benkaben @usertoxicyaoi

@befuddledcinnamonroll @flyingrosebeetle

[thenearsightedmicroraptor]

Haven't written any queer delights bc I was busy drawing furries so to catch up I'm gonna kickstart today prematurely bc we ARE going to a queer meetup which is gonna be great, HOWEVER, my current queer delight is that we grabbed some baked goods from a grocery store and we're now chilling at the train station having a little munch, and my wife is currently sitting EXACTLY like scout tf2 at the end of the meet the team video where he's beat the shit out of that heavy and taken his sandwich and i am enchanted

[carebeardean]

Charles loves Edwin So Much for so many reasons, but I think there must be a particular kind of joy for Charles, who walked on eggshells trying not to say the wrong thing to set off his dad for years, and probably brushed off a lot of racist micro aggressions from his friends before they killed him, watch Edwin Payne absolutely rip a man to shreds with his words.

edwin can’t fit in, has always been too effeminate, too queer, too autistic, and they already killed him for it so he doesn’t bother. what a relief it must be for Charles to be around someone completely, stubbornly himself.

someone who doesn’t lie because it doesn’t occur or him to. someone who is viciously, rightfully angry about the violence that was done to him. who maybe.. Charles doesn’t have to pretend around

[acepalindrome]

The frustrating thing is so many kids think Shakespeare is boring because it’s being taught badly to them. These were PLAYS. They weren’t meant to be read, they were meant to be performed and viewed!! If you read the screenplay of your favorite movie, it’s still not going to have the same impact as watching it! Start with teaching the students the basics of understanding the language, then watch a fairly straight forward adaptation of the work, then read the work, then watch a more wild adaptation that really stretches what you can do with the Bard (Romeo + Juliet, She’s the Man, Throne of Blood, etc.) THAT is the way to get students to engage with Shakespeare.

[thirddagger]

Showed my partner the pilot of X Files. About fifteen minutes in, he went "do they have sex?" and about ten minutes later he asked "is he gay? Are they both gay? Does he help her realize that she's gay? Is he a queer elder? Is she an egg?" and like yes all of that is true you have the spirit you see the vision 💕

[alexjcrowley]

Met Jason Schwartzman today, at the Venice Film Festival. I think at least 20 people completely surrounded him after the showing of Pavements (2024). He ws so incredibly kind with every single one of us, very soft-spoken, took the time for an autograp or a picture with everybody, and I mean, l EVERYBODY (security had to tell him numerous times to get put of the cinema because they had to show another movie). And even outside the cinema, he kept chattering with us and taling pictures and singing photos and programs of the Festival. He thanked us numerous times for coming to see him, seeing his movies, paying him compliments. He seemed almost as happy to see us as we were to see him. I got to tell him that one of my favourite movie characters of all time was Max Fischer, from Rushmore (his first movie ever). He was pleasantly surprised, a little endeared dare I say, thanked for that and I think he paid me a compliment as well but I kinda blacked out from the emotion. I just remember that at some point I said "Thank you for being you" and he said "Thank you for being you" and I still think I died on the spot and I am currently in heaven. It was such a nice moment, I wanted to share.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

I found a new fairy tale to add to my little hoard of queer folktales!

The Princess of China

Albanian folktale, published in 1879 by Auguste Dozon, translated by Robert Elsie.

[Cw: Cross dressing used as deception, but never maliciously.]

This tale follows a Prince and his friend the son of the Grand Vizier. The latter dresses and presents as a woman on two separate occasions. Once to meet the princess of China and tell her his friend is in love with her, once to pretend to be the princess, so he can go get married in her place while she runs off with the prince. Then this happens:

When the son of the Grand Vizier arrived, he was led to the house of the groom with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding. It was the custom there for the sisters of the groom to spend the first three nights with the bride, but the three sisters could not agree which one of them was to go first. The queen, the groom's mother, decided that the youngest daughter, whom she loved the most, should spend the first night with the bride. After the first night, the youngest daughter fell in love with the bride and begged her mother to let her spend the second night there too. The second night, she realized that the bride was actually a young man and said to him, "Tell me the truth, are you a man or a woman?" "I am a man," he replied, " and then told her the story of what had happened. She saw that he was very handsome and said, "I'd like to marry you but I don't know whether you want me." "Oh yes, I do."

They escape the court together, catch up with the prince and the princess of China, and both couples get married.

[haomnyangz]

Thank you all for fulfilling our high school lives. I hope you're being fulfilled, too. Are you guys ready? Before we get to the final song, I'd like to take this chance to remind you all that prom is your last chance - to express your feelings to the one next to you. I know that many of you are afraid. I get it. I've been there. It's not easy, as some people are just beyond our reach. I want to dedicate this song to everyone who needs courage. MY SCHOOL PRESIDENT (2022) DIRECTOR; AU KORNPROM NIYOMSIL