#queer love story that literally devastated everyone who saw it

[smallrat-child]

Sooo, anyways, tlou episode 3 was devastating. They gave us the love story of the century inside of the zombie show of the century. What a show.

[batmanschmatman]

Book Rec: Coming Out Under Fire, by Allan Bérubé

Occasionally I see some discourse on Tumblr from folks in the HBO War fandom or different historical/history adjacent fandoms about how there weren’t that many members of the queer community involved in WWII, and I’d really like to point them and everyone else with an interest in queer history to this wonderful book. Originally published in 1990, Coming Out Under Fire gets into all the different ways queer folks DID participate in the war. It’s from an American perspective, so if you’re looking for other Allied experiences, unfortunately there won’t be much here for you, but it’s exceptionally well researched, and crucially a lot of the content comes from interviews with surviving servicemembers. There’s also a documentary based on the book, which came out a few years later and includes video interviews with some of the folks included in the text.

One of Bérubé’s main points in his introduction – and for writing the book in the first place – is the American government, history textbooks, Hollywood, etc. is able to paint the WWII-era military as an almost entirely straight military force because many queer people who participated in the war effort were silenced during their lifetimes, and were unable or unwilling to reveal their true identities. Some of this was from societal pressure – the post war period saw a huge surge in homophobic rhetoric and persecution in the name of fighting Communism, not to mention the ever present heteronormative pressure to get married and have kids – but also because so many queer veterans died during the AIDS epidemic. Bérubé was inspired to preserve the voices of those who were still with us and shed a light on some of the folks we lost. (Note that this was also an intensely personal issue for Bérubé, who lost friends and his partner to AIDS and thus saw first hand how devastating this was to the community in terms of robbing us of our loved ones, friends, elders, and history itself.)

In the book, Bérubé makes the point over and over again that queer people were involved at basically every level in the American military during the war. There’s stories about guys lying when asked “Do you like girls?” during enlistment, lesbians in the Women’s Army Corps being brought to trial for fraternizing, drag shows in POW camps and in reserve, front line combat veterans discussing losing romantic partners to enemy fire or coming out to foxhole buddies, who were supportive allies rather than hateful. One of my favorite stories that’s always stuck out to me is a guy who came home and decided to come out to his elderly mother, who was fully accepting and supportive of her son’s sexuality. I see so many people speaking in absolutes that there’s NO WAY you could come out to your family and be accepted in the past, and while that was certainly true for so many people, it’s also not an absolute truth.

Please note I am NOT giving blanket permission to make assumptions about real-life people’s sexualities or identities, nor am I saying Band of Brothers fics where half the company is dating each other are historically accurate, but it’s really sad to see folks on here (unknowingly, hopefully) perpetuating the myth that there really weren’t that many queer folks in the military during WWII. We were there, we just couldn’t be out the way we might have liked to be. After the war, the Red Scare, societal pressure, and a literal epidemic silenced countless members of the community about their time in the service. There’s no way to know how many people who fought on Guadalcanal or worked at stateside bases or sorted mail in France were queer, but it’s a lot more than you were led to believe.

As a member of the community and a historian (brief resume: MA in Public History, BA in American History, have published stuff and created exhibits for dozens of museums), I just want to remind folks that we have always been here, and our lives weren’t always miserable and tragic when we came out to people or decided to live as authentically as we could get away with. It’s not completely historically inaccurate to write fic or original fiction where your queer characters can come out to their families and not be shunned, or live with their partners and not be immediately murdered. Being queer wasn’t invented at Stonewall.

[o-wild-west-wind]

okay, here’s my actual thoughtful post: I get why people are upset about the finale…I really do. but I want to mention that there’s a bigger picture to this story that’s missing if you’re zooming too close onto Izzy as a character, and I’m honestly so grateful that the show stuck to the thematic arc it introduced in season 1 because, as per usual, it’s about the themes 🤌 and this show never skimps on the symbolism!!

so here’s the thing: the primary themes are toxic masculinity (& it’s opposite, queer joy); trauma; love as a healing force for the above; and, title alert—DEATH. because it’s so much more than a cool title!

now, Izzy has always represented something metaphorical about all of these points; most directly, he’s always represented masculinity, and s2 has been an arc of toxicity deconstruction. but crucially, he’s also represented all that for Ed, who is the deuteragonist of this show. because—don’t forget—Stede and Ed are the show.

I’ve always doubted myself for feeling this after seeing how fandom saw Izzy as a third romantic figure (which like by all means have a blast in your fanfics I don’t care it’s about joy at the end of the day and pursue that as you want to), but after hearing something about djenks referring to Izzy as a father figure, it confirms a major point for me—Izzy is also in a lot of ways a parallel to Ed’s dad, and a representation of the trauma and guilt Ed felt from that formative killing. for so long, Izzy was an aggressive shadow in Ed’s life, and a tangible reminder of those daddy issues—someone telling him what to do, keeping him Blackbeard—and the beautiful thing is how that changed this season, how Izzy became a version of masculinity that could love and be beautiful and make good from the hurt, the literal poison into positivity. someone antithetical to his own paternalistic force, healing our daddy issues one drag show at a time. BUT, Izzy is still thematically representative within Ed’s arc—and by also representing the trauma that made Ed “Blackbeard,” it does make smart writing sense as to why Izzy died (NOT saying you can’t be sad about it—stick with me for a moment).

because here’s the thing—as aforementioned, this show is also about DEATH. killing is the root of everyone’s trauma, and reconciling a relationship with death is the ultimate arc Ed and Stede are both on, with the ultimate path of learning to live despite its inevitability. there’s a reason it was such a huge thing that Ed couldn’t personally kill, and then in this episode killed so many people with his bare hands in the name of love—and there’s a reason that was framed as a good thing. and there’s also Ed’s (and arguably Stede’s) active suicidality, which has been a huge force driving this season. these are characters who see death as this all-consuming thing, and they see their own deaths as the only solution. death is the traumatic force driving almost everything about their being for so long—and its reconciliation is everything for them, the greatest sign of growth. so Izzy’s death, and everyone beginning again with love—healing each other with love—is a cap to it all. it’s death as a positive force, for once. it’s death as love, not trauma. it’s death as something that will always happen, but this time not forced by your own hand. it’s a death to everything toxic, to what “Blackbeard” represented, and all the while a sort of rebirth. it’s kind of a death to…death? it’s functionally like the real physical moon replacing the giant romantic imaginary orb: it’s taking the thing that’s been artificially morphed in Stede and Ed’s heads and making it real this time, with all the bittersweet emotions that come with tangible reality.

and honestly, I’m glad that it was tragic and emotional. I didn’t think I’d be so devastated to see Izzy die, but it really did get to me, especially because of everything he said to Ricky and then to Ed. but think of it this way: Izzy and Ed might be romantically compelling because they were toxic and charged (and I hope people still enjoy everything they get from that dynamic in fan work), but imagine if the show had actually gone in that direction—where would it take us thematically? it would kill the thesis; it would be love as chaos and entertainment, but not healing. instead, this show gave us something so much more powerful: a legitimate, fully-fleshed trauma arc.

trauma hurts. Izzy’s death hurts. but that’s okay. that’s great, actually! it means the storytelling was effective—that Izzy’s arc made you feel something. and i know this won’t be every viewer’s experience, but honestly? I’m glad I can have this grieving process in such a beautifully framed light in the safe space ship of this show, because let’s be real—death, real life death, fucks you up. and let me tell you, I could’ve used this show during so many episodes of grief in my life. but here it is now, reminding us that our grief and trauma doesn’t define us—and WHAT a powerful thing for queer love, especially, to be presented as the thing that heals us all. ESPECIALLY when so much grief and death in this community is woven so deeply with the trauma of our identity.

so grieve as you need to, but don’t forget to turn the poison into positivity 💛 because that’s what the show is telling us—choose live, despite!

[hazbinbabbles]

Nah diss Sherlock to hell and back leave it here. Those asses had to insert 10 "eew gay" jokes every season, I had to be uncomfortable while seeing John get insanely angry just bc someone called him gay to make a stale, forced joke (same reaction one would expect from someone called "pedo"). They put a scene in s3 where the stereotypical fangirl (fat and blue haired according to the fatphobic and mysogynystic writers who also made fat jokes at Gatiss, who's rod thin) is screamed at by Andersen because she dared fantasize about Sherlock and Moriarty. Andersen was the "loser" everyone mocked in the show and having him mock a stand in for the "queer dumb fangirls" was despicable. The funniest of it all is that Andersen fantasized about Sherlock bunjee jumping from the hospital roof and then kissing Molly, James Bond style, and in s4 we get half confirmation Sherlock's got feelings for her. Sooo yeah, fun times! Also I remember once at an interview where I think it was Caitlin Moran, she had Benedict and Martin read some smut from a fanfiction by lying and saying it was something else. All to stir the usual "omg how dare these fangirls ship 2 men disgusting lol", I was following the author whose fanfiction had been stolen and she was devastated, she stopped writing for a while after that. There was so much horrible behaviour towards queer fans, especially women/androgynous people, we got called hetero perverts just because we saw some queer subtext sometimes, while in reality most of the people were just dreaming of any kind of representation, even if it was 2 men (don't get me started on how basically lgbt+. friendly in the 2000-2010 was literally just gay men and a lesbian here and there, nothing else). Most Fanfiction in any fandom is pg rated anyways, and yet wherever people were hoping for more from a subtext love story, they were called perverts. We've come a long way since those dark ages.

I’ve watched a few interviews with the cast and crew of Good Omens and can I just say that, as someone who was a BBC’s Sherlock fan back when it was still airing, it makes me so incredibly happy to finally have a show that not only doesn’t queerbait (yes, the bar is in hell), but where the actors seem genuinely happy with and open about the queer direction the show is going in, and where they don’t shame the fans for also being happy about this development. I just watched an interview with Michael Sheen where he, almost unprompted, brought up fanfiction and said that he thinks that it’s a shame that people used to be weird about fanfiction because he thinks it’s amazing and shows a love for the show. And… as someone who kind of still gets upset whenever I’m reminded of certain interviews and panels with the cast and crew of Sherlock (if you were in the fandom I’m sure you know which ones I’m talking about), this unabashed celebration of queer joy from the cast and crew of a big show like this is just something I could never have imagined as a young, queer fan!

I get that there are different circumstances, Sherlock fans could definitely be a lot sometimes, and maybe it’s cruel of me to compare shows like this. But I genuinely believe that Sherlock did some actual damage to my (and many others’) trust in media and in creators. It’s one of the main reasons I absolutely didn’t believe Our Flag Means Death would do what it did even when I was seeing it play out before my very eyes. It’s why I didn’t believe Crowley and Aziraphale would ever even come close to actually expressing their feelings for one another despite all of the queer subtext in season 1 and despite the cast and crew calling it a love story. Maybe all of this even added to my suspicions that they weren’t going to follow through because we’ve all been let down time and time again.

And I’m not trying to pin the fault of queerbaiting solely on Sherlock and the team behind it - I am aware that there were many other big shows and movies that also queerbaited at the time. But out of all of those shows, I mainly watched Sherlock and it, along with the interviews with the cast and crew, were my main points of reference for what to expect regarding queer representation in (especially mainstream) media at the time. Which is why I’m mainly using Sherlock as an example of this unfortunate trend.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that with all of these shows now subverting our very, very low expectations for what kind of space queer characters and queer stories are allowed to occupy in (especially mainstream) media, I feel like my teenage self is starting to heal just a bit. But, both back then and in hindsight, I’m also completely baffled that a few shows in the late 2000s and early 2010s were able to get away with the shit they were pulling and completely ruin young, queer fans’ trust in both creators and in their own media literacy.

[naruhearts]

I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired. 

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

[yurimother]

The Best Yuri of 2019

2019 was a challenging year for many, in and out of the anime community, which is still reeling from the horrific attack at Kyoto Animation’s first studio in July that killed 36 people. However, I want to take this moment, as we start a new decade, to reflect on some of the greatest achievements in Yuri.

2019 marked the genre’s 100th anniversary, 100 years since Nobuko Yoshiya released her landmark lesbian novel Yaneura no Nishojo that shaped and created Yuri as we know it. It was possible Yuri’s best years ever, as more incredible titles were released and localized, we experienced fantastic events and moments, and more. This article is part of my continuing celebration of all things Yuri!

Note that many of the works mentioned came out before 2019, but they either were first released in English during 2019 or hit particular high points during this year. Now then, here is the best of Yuri in 2019!

15: SukeraSparo

This Japanese Yuri visual novel developer is starting to reach new heights as they set their sights on releasing new and innovate Yuri titles. The English release of The Expression Amrilato, an educational Yuri visual novel that teaches the player Esperanto, was one of the most unique and creative works I have the pleasure of playing this year. But, they outdid themselves this year, releasing a sequel, Itsuka no Memorajxo, creating one of the most beautiful Yuri games in Folklore of Kudan, and founding a sister brand, SukeraSomero, “to fill the world with YURI!”

The Expression Amrilato is available in English for PC on Steam and Mangagamer

14: Mage & Demon Queen

This outrageous and vivacious webcomic hits its stride in Season 2. After setting a solid foundation, this masterpiece by Kuru “Color-LES” is finally able to explore some more interesting plot lines such as its characters’ pasts, conflicts between the demons and humans, and figuring out who’s gonna be the bottom (it’s Malori, it was always going to be Malori). It is chock full of modern humor and moments I can only describe as hilariously kinky, while rarely feeling gross of sleazy. I can only wait to see what is next for these star-crossed lovers.

Mage & Demon Queen: is available to read in English on Webtoon

13: Yuri Anthologies

In 2018, Yen Press gave us the first hint of some Yuri anthologies starting to squeak into the West with Éclair, but 2019 threw the floodgates open! New works are coming out in both Japan and the West, featuring multiple artists coming together to create works featuring workplace romance, isekai, first-time stories, and even MARRIAGE!! Additionally, creators released volumes collecting their various short stories, like Rouge Nagashiro’s Eve and Eve, and some series saw multiple artists contribute to an already established world such as in the Bloom Into You Anthologies.

12: SHWD

Sono’s science fiction Yuri doujinshi series, published in English by Lilyka, is everything I did not know I wanted in a Yuri series. It showcases pulse-pounding action as the women of the “Special Hazardous Waste Disposal” fight to take down the horrific Dynamis. It has musclebound beasts of women that exude strength, power, and femininity at all times. And it has a compelling story about overcoming personal conflicts and learning to rely on others.

SHWD is available digitally on Lilyka

11: If I Could Reach You

No other series this year delivered an emotional gut-punch like If I Could Reach You. This tragic and beautiful manga by tMnR follows a young girl as she attempts hopelessly to overcome her attraction to her brother’s wife. Everything from the artwork to the dialogue masterfully communicates the devastation and pain that the protagonist Uta feels. It is beautiful and devastating, and I carry every awesome moment on my mind continuously.

If I Could Reach You is available digitally and physically in English from Kodansha: https://amzn.to/36vsYPe

Honorable mention: SQ/Tamen de Gushi/Their Story 

2019 was a little bit of a slow year for Tan Jiu’s webtoon, thanks to an extended hiatus, especially when compared to 2018’s triumphant and spectacular storyline. However, small moments of genius like Sun Jing’s father’s phenomenal visual monologue keep this work in peak form top and my heart. I hope that its recent Japanese serialization on Comic Walker help even more people enjoy it.

10: Still Sick

In my recent review, I called this workplace romance a “Yuri manga for Yurijin,” and there is no way I could come up with a more apt description. Still Sick surprised me with its self-awareness, knowledge, and commentary on the genre. It has an incredibly deep story about two complex and layered characters that ignite each other’s passion, in more ways than one.

Still Sick is available digitally and physically in English from Tokyopop: https://amzn.to/2rVRH07

9: Going Beyond Girl Meets Girl

Yuri stories tend to repeat the same story, two girls meet, they fall for each other, they get together, THE END! The past decade or so has finally seen more stories adding sexual elements, in contrast to earlier S works, and some even explored the dating life of two schoolgirls. However, we have recently seen something remarkable: works featuring couples “graduating” (literally or metaphorically) and enter the real world. Series like Citrus, Kase-san, and, briefly, Bloom Into You explore the relationships as they exit the honeymoon phase and get into the meat of lesbian livelihood.

Kase-san and Yamada is available for English preorder: https://amzn.to/2MXnp4w

8: Nagata Kabi

Over the past few years, Nagata Kabi has redefined what the Yuri genre can be. Her powerful autobiographical manga essays My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, My Solo Exchange Diary, and Genjitsu Touhi Shitetara Boroboro ni Natta Hanashi communicate her experiences with queer identity, mental illness, and alcoholism. No work of fiction could ever hope to reach Nagata’s strength and crushing honesty. Nagata’s manga has and will continue to change readers and the genre for years to come.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is available digitally and physically in English from Seven Seas: https://amzn.to/2MZ7DWJ 

7: Bloom Into You

Nakatani Nio’s popular Yuri series Bloom Into You crushed it in 2019. It concluded serialization, ending on an incredibly high note, and dominating the market in both English and Japanese, selling over one million copies (well deserved). Additionally, Sentai Filmworks released an excellent collector’s edition of the 2018 television anime adaption that is now a must-have for Yuri collectors. But my favorite aspect of this series is the spin-off light novel series featuring one of its best characters, which have already begun English release.

Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka is available digitally and for physical preorder from Seven Seas: https://amzn.to/2SVPVHG

6: Heart of the Woods

When I heard that one of the co-creators of Highway Blossoms, one of the better English Yuri visual novels, was creating his own studio, I was pretty excited. But nothing could have prepared me for Studio Élan's first release, Heart of the Woods, which blew me away. The enchanting adventure full of exceptionally queer characters shattered every expectation I had. I am looking forward to its Switch port and voice acting patch, as well as more titles from Élan.

Heart of the Woods is available for PC on Steam. Switch edition coming later this year.

Honorable mention: Hayama-sensei to Terano-sensei wa Tsukiatte iru

Oui Pikachi’s manga about two teachers navigating a new relationship is one of my new favorites. Everyone is so supportive of the title characters as they stumble their way through an honest and mature love. However, I am only giving it an honorable mention this year, as I am sure it will be on this list next year after Seven Seas releases the first volume in English as The Gym Teacher and School Nurse are Dating!

The Gym Teacher and School Nurse are Dating! is available for preorder in English from Seven Seas: https://amzn.to/39JhXMs

5. Sexiled

Ameko Kaeruda’s spectacularly feminist and outrageously funny light novel series Sexiled is could ever ask for and more. I feel in love with its compelling female characters and their riveting battle against the sexist conventions of their society, all of which painfully mirror reality. This work is cathartic, empowering, and so very, very gay.

Sexiled is available digitally in English from J-Novel Club. Physical edition coming later this year: https://amzn.to/35u6NaW

4: Yuri Life

I adore domestic Yuri. Granted, I love a good romance and fantasy, but so many of these stories exist that it feels overwhelming, and sometimes it is just good to sit down and read about two women who love each other living their everyday adult lives in bliss. Kurukuruhime’s Yuri Life, which I have enjoyed ever since it was first uploaded to Pixiv and am so proud to own in print, is precisely that. Nine couples being cute and living together in a variety of humorous, scandalous, and adorable situations. Yuri cohabitation has never been so good! Now, if I could only get some Yuri titles about women raising kids together…

Yuri Life is available digitally and physically in English from Yen Press: https://amzn.to/35stSLg

3: Children’s Cartoons

For the past several years, children’s cartoons and media have slowly begun to allow bits of queer representation onto the screen. While we are still a long way from having Elsa kiss a girl, the small and large victories on children’s television give me hope. Some of my personal favorites include an episode of Nickelodeon’s The Loud House about a lesbian date, a lesbian couple and agender character (using they/them pronouns) in Craig of the Creek, the female protagonist of Twelve Forever developing a crush on another girl, and of course the unbelievable amount of queerness that She-Ra and Steven Universe shove into every moment. I wish I had more series like these when I was young, and I am thrilled that my students get to grow up with them.

2: Our Dreams at Dusk (Shimanami Tasogare)

Yuhki Kamatani’s Our Dreams at Dusk is easily 2019’s best manga. The incredible story explores many real aspects of LGBTQ identities, gay, lesbian, trans, non-binary, and asexual included, in an emotional and resonating masterpiece. The artwork is stunning and more expressive than words could ever be. I stand by what I said in my review, that Our Dreams at Dusk is the greatest manga I have ever read and wholeheartedly believes that it was deserving of the only 10/10 score I gave in 2019.

Our Dreams at Dusk is available digitally and physically in English from Seven Seas: https://amzn.to/2s282AE

Honorable mention: ‘The Conditions of Paradise’ Licensed

One of the best moments of this year came out of Anime Expo when Seven Seas announced that they had licensed Morishima Akiko’s Rakuen no Jouken and would be releasing it as The Conditions of Paradise in 2020. Not only is The Conditions of Paradise a fantastic and mature work of Yuri literature, but it is also over a decade old, having been published originally in 2007. This license, more than anything else, helped me realize how far Yuri came this year. Not only is the hottest new series being adapted, but a historic and profound classic of the genre.

The Conditions of Paradise is available for preorder in English: https://amzn.to/2FjTE9M

1: Yuri Publishers

Not too long ago, it was rare for us to see more than a few Yuri manga releases in a year if any, but now we are at the point where a publisher can do an event announcing five Yuri licenses in a single day! As of this year, all the major publishers, and plenty of smaller ones, are actively licensing, adapting, and publishing amazing Yuri works: Yen Press, Viz, Kodansha, Seven Seas, Tokyopop, Renta, J-Novel Club, and more keep giving us incredible Yuri. I also have to mention the incredible work Lilyka Manga is doing, working directly with mangaka to adapt Yuri doujinshi titles into English, something I would have never dreamed of a few years ago.

As Yuri enters its second century, we are staring down the rest of 2020, a year that will no doubt go down in current Yuri history. The year will see a record number of Yuri manga releases both in Japan and from licensed series in the West. We are getting several promising anime series like Adachi to Shimamura, Magia Record, Oshi ga Budoukan Ittekuretara Shinu, a Princess Principal movie, and more. I cannot wait to see what this year will hold for YuriMother and the Yuri genre. I hope you all stick with me through it as we navigate the waters of a newer, gayer, and greater world of Yuri.

[ellelans]

You made a tag comment about how Buddie wasn't planned from the beginning. And therefore what we got in Season 2 wasn't (at the time) the groundwork for a love story. I agree completely! Much of it I can see as either a bit of fun (the Christmas elf, the instagram girl) or that kind of hyper-masc heterosexuality that loops around itself and becomes gay (Buck's whole...thing with Eddie in the beginning, the focus on Eddie's body/hotness/physical appearance). But sometimes I step back and look at the whole and I'm all 🧐 🤔.

I don't even know what I'm asking lol. Would just love your thoughts/feelings on the confusing spectacle that are Buck and Eddie in season 2. And when/how/why did the show change their mind?

Thank you so much for the ask and you know what? Let’s talk about it.I recently had an in depth chat about this pretty unpopular opinion with a friend and I tried to explain to her why I don't see buddie as an actual pairing or having any canon potential until early s3 and why I don't believe they were planned from the beginning.This will be long and all over the place of course lol

The first and the most obvious reason is the way 911 deals with main characters and their romantic arcs.They don't actually drag it on for long because there is no need or time for that since every single main character has a strong storyline of their own and any romantic development between any pair as an additional combined storyline. Relationships happen fast on 911 because they are planned ahead and the only relationship that took longer than usual few episodes was Chim and Maddie and they were already kissing and planning a date in 2x11.

Also when shows enter their second season there is never a way to predict how long it will stay on the air and because of that it is impossible for me to believe that buddie was planned as some epic old school slowburn that is nowhere as close to be resolved after 3 seasons.When I say old school slowburn I mean shows that have this one heterosexual romance at the center of the universe that is usually stretched across seasons and builds up sexual tension between characters and it takes literally years for them to finally get together.We have these two characters that where made for each other and you KNOW that they will eventually get together because of some ridiculous pining that will eventually end in a kiss and everyone will scream and cry.And maybe that’s how buddie feels to me now after years of careful build up-but the way I see it they as a potential something didn't happen in s2.

We all joke about how character introduction of Eddie is the gayest we have ever seen and Buck's reaction to him as true bisexual and I do that myself too because I am a bisexual too and tbh its hard to unsee (also I don't want to) but lets remove our rainbow glasses for a second. What really did happened in that scene? Eddie's perfect abs on display,Chim and Hen fun comments on how beautiful he is,Bobby's praise and bragging about getting Eddie and his Silver Star on the team and Buck's insecurities flaring up as a reaction to all of this.Buck immediately feels threatened.At this point we of course have no idea how deeply his insecurities run or why,but as episode progresses we witness Eddie on his first call making a better decision to how to handle a medical situation and backed up by Bobby.It has sort of a devastating effect on Buck,who suddenly starts acting like we have never seen him before.Then there is a that scene at the gym where Buck tells Eddie how he is his problem. And later we of course have the scene in ambulance when Eddie asked what exactly they are measuring. Because that's what it looked like - a usual macho men measuring context. But the thing is 911 doesn’t toxic masculinity when it comes to main male characters and we saw many examples of that already by then,but the biggest one was supposed to be BuckandEddie. Equals,partners and best friends.

911 was already pushing boundaries with cast,characters and relationships diversity and I strongly believe that what they wanted to show us was a male equivalent of what we are used to see in female bffs -a different kind of a friendship between men. Men who care about each other,who talk about feelings,discuss sex,dating or why they don’t,who again openly acknowledge that they find each other attractive and giving advices on how to take a more flattering selfie,who are not afraid of crying, admit they are struggling or heartbroken or loving their kid.Honestly when was the last time any of us saw a male friendship like theirs?Men are not allowed to be like that on TV (I am still shocked that its a Fox show tbh) and especially with each other.We are not used to see such a development so no wonder people started paying attention-which was what writers wanted,of course.

But that also brings us to that important question about queer undertones,subtext and do what we actually see in s2. Are there queer undertones?Absolutely. Subtext?It’s right there but you will probably not get it unless you’re reading between the lines.Before we get to Christmas Elf,there was ‘’He is cute!/He gets that a lot,you should’ve seen his kid...’’ Maddie and Buck scene that is once again reinforces that Buck finds Eddie attractive and it shouldn’t be a surprise because we already know from 2x01 he has eyes - but they mention it AGAIN and that personally made me raise a brow or two.By the time we get to that Christmas episode,we already have Shannon back and Buck finally moved on from Abby with Taylor and then Ali and then we are given another queer coded scene-with Christmas elf.And its very cute and to an average heterosexual viewer its a nice little joke,but any queer watching that scene was probably taken aback a little.

So why imo did Tim&Co do it and when they realized they can actually see where they can take BuckandEddie and when they started becoming buddie?My answer is ship teasing.It’s what a lot of people actually mistake for queer baiting,but we are not talking about that rn.Ship teasing works like charm and if shows can get away with that-they will totally use it to their advantage.It’s usually not always malicious,but it IS always intentional because that brings in a category of people that were overlooked for a long time-online fandom.Now I have seen some opinions that fandom doesn’t really matter,it’s the ratings that count and that is NOT TRUE.You can have your ratings,but if there is no buzz online?Your show is going nowhere.For at least a decade now every self-respecting production has teams to monitor fandom activities because it gives them better ideas about how consumers(fans) are interacting with their product (show).Fandom is important because we generate the buzz.So I do believe that BuckandEddie and that sweet ship teasing were to get a certain part of the fandom pay attention.

I wasn’t here when S2 aired so I don’t know if that was the case,but it is obvious that these scenes I talked about above made fans pay a LOT of attention. And maybe that was the reaction writers needed to start changing course from ship teasing to start building up to something else.They maybe didn’t plan it at the very beginning and on paper,but lets also not forget the insane chemistry between Oilver and Ryan,which imo is another big reason-it's impossible to ignore.

Because S3?Is light years away from S2 in terms of BuckandEddie-they became buddie.In s3 Buck and Eddie become each other’s significant other,they are in a primary relationship. ’’Buck invites Eddie...’’?!!!!! It is not yet romantic and probably won’t be until ending of s5 if we are lucky-but it is in your face,they are not subtle anymore.I personally saw buddie only at the end of 3x03 when Eddie came over and said that there is noone in the world he trusts with his son more than Buck, looking like he did into Buck’s eyes,while ‘Photograph’ played in the background right before Buck’s overvoice about being seen and found and a raft to bring one home. After S4 ending tho...we all know that something is about to happen and its like there is electricity in the air as we are waiting for s5!

Probably a lot more thoughts than you expected,but I have many feelings about these two and when buddie goes canon this post will become completely irrelevant lol 💖 

[zandracourt]

And now for something completely personal...

I have unfollowed Misha on social media, which makes me sad. I appreciate anyone who wants to keep talking, but I had to turn it off because Misha’s words tonight were hard to hear from someone I thought had a better understanding of the community he is advocating for. And perhaps what we are seeing is just the reality of being an ally versus actually being part of the community. In the same way that whites just end up sounding defensive and tone deaf when trying to explain why something racist really wasn’t.

My story is of being bi. I have a daughter who is pan, and I am het-married because that happened before I fully understood my bisexuality. I’m out now and I have had F/F experiences, but I have not moved in the world with a full-time female sexual partner, so I don’t know the full weight of queer oppression and I think that is important for people to know.

But what I do know really, really well is what it’s like to not fully understand being bisexual until my late 30s-early 40s because of falling for my best friend. I understand that it takes time to process and even believe in the feelings you have. It can take years. I understand having to come to terms with queerness when you’ve lived your life very convincingly heterosexual. I understand the sense of hypocrisy and denial you feel inside. And I understand what it means to know that a life you might idealize just can’t be the life you live. So I profoundly understand Cas making a confession of love and having Dean not be able to reciprocate, whatever his reason. What I don’t understand is why you took a situation that could have been a true gift to the queer community and literally salt and burn it to ash.

The damage SPN did was in being unwilling to operate from any kind of queer perspective while deliberately using queer tokenism to manipulate a fanbase for profit and longevity. The problem the show cannot escape is that the world has changed tremendously in 15 years. Queer viewers no longer have to accept scraps. We have shows that give us queer characters right up front in many genres. Not saying they all do them well, but representation is higher than it has ever been. And that is exactly why all this schlock by the CW, the desperate attempts by the actors to smooth it all over, and their repeated comments that they just have no idea why everyone is so upset just feels like they are reacting to not being able to continue to use queerness for profit and not out any actual caring for queer people. They just don’t want the bad press and they don’t want to be called out for their homophobia because that damages their reputations. They had a chance to be a landmark in queer storytelling and ended up as a enormous example of everything wrong with homophobic storytelling and queerbaiting.

Destiel is not new. It’s not fringe. And it’s not our fucking imaginations. It’s not. And if you can’t see it, chances are you are hopelessly, painfully straight. You will never get queer stories and I feel bad for you honestly, because the depth and vitality that queer characters and queer romance brings to storytelling is incredible.

Cas loved Dean, yes. And he finally got the courage to say so and promptly died. It DOES. NOT. MATTER. Why he died. It doesn’t matter that we got word he was brought to heaven or that it was written by a gay writer. It IS a bury-your-gays, devastating, repressive, horrible message because Cas never got to be fulfilled as a queer character. He never got to discover how to be queer and find happiness even if Dean doesn’t love him back. He became canonically gay and died within seconds. That is NOT supporting the queer community or queer stories. It’s literally killing them.

As for Dean and whatever he said or didn’t say, again, the conspiracy theories around it demonstrates exactly why people are so upset. Because they were cowards. They were cowards in an era when everyone is fucking done with those who cannot take a stand and instead flounder in the “there are great people on both sides” ethos. It is the same level of GTFO attitude I have for any one who says “gays are fine, as long as they are not gay here”: be that church, a restaurant, on a television set, or any where else. To echo Justice Ginsberg, there will be enough queer stories on TV when they all are. And it is exactly SPN’s fear of “going there” with Destiel YEARS ago that brought them to this miserable end. Destiel only became a risk worth doing when they believed there was no cost to them; when they could kill everyone and never show anyone being queer so they never had to actually deal with queerness at all. After all, Buffy didn’t truly love Spike, but she still told him she loved him and held his hand as he sacrificed himself for her in the final episode. *That* is the trope of a sacrificial romantic death. And now they are paying the price for their lack of integrity to their own show and story telling.

As a final note, I’ve been thinking about the fact that as a fic writer, I’ve had no desire to fix this ending, despite having written many Destiel fics over the years. The embers were still burning on the McDanno dumpster-fire last April when I started to write that fix-it fic and that was my first ever fic in that fandom! That’s how badly I needed to change that ending for myself. After Endgame, I needed better closure for Steve, so I wrote one. But after SPN, I’ve had no desire to write Destiel at all. I haven’t even wanted to read any SPN fics. I have lost my joy for the show and everything attached to it.

I don’t give a shit about CW or most of their programming. I *have* cared about the actors and the fan spaces because there are amazing people there and Misha has been an incredible role model in so many, many ways for not just the fandom, but for human beings in general. Until tonight.

Nina Simone said we all have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served. That was exactly how I felt when I saw Misha’s message on Facebook. He is so much more than this fandom and after some time, I know I will probably follow him again in the future because he is a truly fine person who is doing incredible things in this world. For now, though, I can’t.

So to the network, showrunners, and as painful as it is to say, actors, here’s the hard, cold, truth: Destiel fans have not caused any of this. The show did. And sadly, there is nothing you can do to repair the damage you have done. That is your legacy now and we all have to live with it.

[phoenixyfriend]

The Catboy Valois AU

This one is a little cursed, and inspired by this Totally Spies post.

This AU does contain some nsfw content, which I will place at the end of the post and mark for (it’s right after the dog pics). Once again, this was brainstormed on the GG server, back in October of 2019. Biggest contributor other than myself was @atagotiak​.

So I decided that, at some point, I need to see one of those inexplicable and very horny modern catpeople AUs.

Where a fraction of the population just happens to have cat ears and tails etc. for... minimal reason.

Tarvek def has them. Bc twink. Sticking to the tropes, you know.

All the Valois are catpeople because most of history didn't have the option of interbreeding, just coexisting. Something something sterile hybrids because chromosomes.

Andronicus Valois, Catboy King

Lucrezia was full human and Aaronev never had a chance.

"Most of history" because recently they scienced up ways to get around it, so there are catperson/human hybrids, like Gil and Zeetha (Klaus is human, Zanta is not).

Klaus is kinda glad Gil has cat ears bc this makes people automatically assume he can’t be the dad even if they realize it’s technically possible.

This means Agatha gets her boys.

The human (Lars), the hybrid (Gil), and the cat (Tarvek).

Anevka's initial robot body doesn't have the cat features just due to the fact that Tarvek was aiming for Bare Minimum, and then when he added them in later she decided she liked being able to pick when she had them.

I am morally obligated to reblog the callout art @mercurialvoid​ did for me a few years ago.

We’re not gonna talk about that, though.

human Othar/catgirl Anevka

SCENT MARKING

It's considered Undignified but everyone still DOES it, just... discreetly.

Agatha thinks nothing of it when Zeetha rubs their cheeks together while training and then someone looks at her funny and asks if that's her girlfriend or something.

And Agatha Realizes that she's currently got Belongs-to-Zeetha scent on her and has to scramble to explain that Zeetha kind of adopted her as a little sister because it's the closest approximation she can come up with that still has Acceptable Connotations.

I think platonic marking is a THING but mostly within families, children, and really close female friends, like holding hands. (Toxic masculinity does apply.)

And kolee-zumil is effectively family relationship.

Agatha can't SMELL the scent markings but she gets used to them.

Also like. There's probably different levels of scent marking depending on the body part. Wrists and cheeks are different.

Jagers that used to be catboys have better senses of smell, and are the ones sent to find a Heterodyne.

Agatha and Lars make out but don't go all the way because Agatha is not ready. (Meanwhile, Zeetha can literally smell how horny these dumb kids are.)

TINY BABY GILVEK FACE NUZZLES WHILE STILL ON CW:

(Imagine how much more dangerous the baby gilvek airship-exploring shenanigans would be given one is a catboy and the other is half catboy.)

Gil just kinda scent marks on literally everything/everyone. The boy is affection-starved well into adulthood. He probably purrs too. And purring is probably considered kinda undignified.

Tarvek purrs when he’s designing clothes in his head. He’s embarrassed when he realizes. Everyone thinks it’s cute tho.

Also when crafting super-complicated diabolical plans.

Purring isn’t very diabolical. So it’s embarrassing and doesn’t fit with the aesthetic at all.

It’s hard to do an evil scheme while being an image-conscious catboy.

Gil only. Sort of knows how to cat. He's not very good at it. Zulenna helped but...

Is Von Pinn a cat? Gut says yes. Though it makes it less likely she'd be mistaken for Lu as the students did, but hey! She’d appreciate that.

She probably wouldn’t know how to cat.

Or maybe she would, given we’re assuming hereditary and she was made for Andronicus... She probably knows a bit abt how to tell other people how to cat, but she doesn’t know how to cat herself.

The Muses... not designed to look like catpeople. Ruined the minimalist bodies RVR was going for, going by canon's lack of consistent ears or noses

Agatha does not realize at first that Von-Pinn is a cat-lady because her ears match her hair and every time she sees Agatha her ears go back, and the tail is hidden under the hobble dress.

Otilia is very happy to go from catwoman body to Giant Metal Cat body

KITTY BANGLADESH DUPREE

She's got a faint pattern to her fur that's, on closer inspection, very much indicating she's a PANTHER.

Consider: Tarvek starts working himself up into a frenzied panic and the nearest Trusted Person starts petting him to calm him down and he like. Melts.

TBH tho, a good portion of canon Tarvek’s behaviour can already be described as “cat does something stupid and immediately after attempts to pretend he has dignity even though everyone saw the stupid thing.”

Once Tarvek calms down... Lazy Cat Time.

OH

NECK PINCH

CH would be ecstatic that Agatha snagged two suitors, then swing around to devastated that they’re both catboys, and maybe delusional enough to attempt to cut the ears/tails off like that’d solve anything then come around to “well there’s always science” once it’s fixed.

All Valois have high necks on their outfits, at least at the back

So nobody tries to Deactivate The Cat

(One less thing for Anevka to worry about.)

Because, you know. Canon decided to cut Agatha in half to acquire an heir, so we can’t exactly say the Castle is all that sensible.

It does calm down once Agatha mentions she has Lars, though.

Per @lyratalus​: Krosp could be... so much more dangerous in this AU. What if he was designed to be emperor of all catpeople?

Cats never do what they're told anyways, and you can’t really control people without wasps, but the attempt was made! Vapnoople was ambitious!

Long story short, there's a spark of Something but then they just bat him off the table.

Imagine Seffie making Martellus Stop by deactivating the cat

Violetta is the cutest lil catgirl...

SHE GETS REALLY BRISTLEY WHEN SHE'S MAD

HE'S NOT A TWINK AND IT'S WEIRD. Not even a twunk???

Martellus is

So fucking ODD for a catboy

Like it HAPPENS but it means that human women are more likely to find him attractive than catgirls (and even that's a bit of a long shot on the basis of personality).

(Gil excused from the catboys-are-twink-to-twunk rule on the basis of being half human, and his dad being Basically A Wall.)

That said, for Andy I’m gonna go with "buff as fuck but sooooooo charismatic that all the catgirls, and human girls, flocked to him anyway."

So that’s at least two Bara catboys in this AU

Tarvek is canonically more or less the same size/shape as Gil, but... in my heart, Tarvek’s a twunk. He’s got muscle but he's not AS big, and he's got intense Twink energy, especially since Tarvek actually is queer.

(And they're both straight so they're not even technically bara, just Buff.)

(Not twinks either but...)

(Twink is a fun word.)

Colette is human and Seffie isn't but they'd need science for babies ANYWAY so who cares? It's a lot of Seffie laying her head in Colette's lap and purring as she falls asleep because Colette just keeps petting her.

Catboy Martellus still makes sparkhound shapeshifters. He's a catperson...  but he's still a Dog Person.

Martellus and his dynamic with the sparkhounds:

He loves them, they love him. But they’re embarrassing sometimes.

THIS MARKS THE BEGINNING OF THE NSFW CONTENT

ANYWAY back to the point, which is that a lot of these catperson AUs are just... really super horny.

Which is valid.

Ears are technically erogenous zones for everyone but for the cat people... it's a Lot. It's also not like. Inherently sexual? But it can be. Like spooning. It feels nice ALWAYS but with the right person it's also HORNY.  Or like brushing someone else's hair. 

Ear rubs and headpats that result in like, intense sensation? Good actually.

Also I’m declaring that catpeople have heats. Or at least like. Heightened mating seasons? Extra horny times.

So you have Agatha and Lars normal, Gil kinda horny and confused, and Tarvek rubbing himself against the nearest spouse in hopes that someone's going to fuck the living daylights out of him.

Valois probably take suppressing things as a matter of course bc it’s hard to stay alert to assassination attempts when overwhelmingly horny. When Tarvek deliberately forgoes them eventually, everyone is touched by how much trust it shows.

Without suppressants, the horny is either something you can cope with or something that is intense but comes in Very brief periods. Either one day a month, or a week twice a year? Something like that.

Honestly though, imagine if Gil tried to hide being a catperson for the sake of the Empire or some nonsense, and had to just suffer when in heat?

Agatha likes to watch the boys go at it because there's something about Fangs On Neck that's super pleasurable for cat people and she can't provide that for Tarvek but Gil certainly can.

Bonding marks aren't a thing but possessive biting is.

(Since birth control is so easily accessed in GG, I feel like Lu’s opinion of catboys would be a super gross objectifying thing.)

(Which. Yeah.)

(Lucrezia basically has that opinion on any man in canon that isn’t immediately useful to her for science reasons.)

[trinitea-fics]

Too Many Thoughts about Bare: a Pop Opera

So I saw Bare last night (last week actually, it’s taking me a while to write this. @bluejaye91 I’m sorry it’s taken so long) and I’m expectantly emotionally distraught. Anyways, I really love when people share their experiences seeing Bare, ‘cause every production is so different, I thought I’d share some things this production did. 

During the last chorus of You and I Peter and Jason were waltzing together and it was adorable

THEY ADDED A LINE “PETER SIMMONDS, MERCUTIO” WHEN SISTER CHANTELLE ANNOUNCED THE CAST LIST!!! GOD BLESS

I really thought that the McConnell sibling relationship was really sweet, they hugged at the end of Plain Jane Fat Ass

Wonderland was the most CRACKHEAD ENERGY thing I’ve ever seen. They really embarrassed how absurd the ‘White Boy Drug Rap’ is. Lucas was giving it 110%, running around, rapping in everyone’s faces and he LEAP onto the table like a madman. The rest of the Wonderland Crew had this mixed look of embarrassment and amusement. 

The audience went BANANAS afterwards. The Drug Rap literally got one of the biggest applause in the show that they cast missed their cue for the proceeding dialogue.

Jason had a tshirt that said “Saint Cecilia’s Crew 2020″ and I WANT IT

Nadia and Ivy have a unicorn poster in their room omg

During A Quiet Night at Home Nadia was holding a chocolate bar, was staring down it, play around with it in her hands and ended tossing it aside.

BUT THERE WAS NO CELLO IN THIS PRODUCTION AND I’M MAD

I could sing my praises about the actress who play Nadia forever, she was perfect.

During the rave Peter wore a white t shirt with a BLACK VEST ON TOP LIKE THE DWEEB HE IS

OKAY, POSSIBLY ONE OF MY FAVOURITE MOMENT(S) At the end of Rolling Peter and Jason were making out, but then Peter turned away, clearly upset. Then there was this split second where Jason reached his hand out for Peter, who stared at a second before taking it. Only then did Best Kept Secret start. THEN LATER Jason held his hand out like that for Ivy in Promise to during “Maybe I can/Learn to love me”, but then realizes what he’s doing and pulls his hand away. We love a motif!

At the beginning of Birthday, Bitch! Matt was setting up dinner-for-two for him and Ivy and was all sweet and dorky about it before the rest of the gang showed up

In Are You There? the “Who usually leads?” line was directly proceeded by Peter whispering in Matt’s ear about him and Jason. Which I see as Peter expressing his frustration at Jason “leading” and discouraging Peter from coming out. I never really thought about that line that way before.

911 Emergency! “WHAT👏HAS👏HE👏DONE👏FOR👏ME👏LATELY👏”

During the “No such thing as heroes who are queer” line in Ever After Peter and Jason were standing really close together, just staring at each other during that pause, until Jason broke away, looking absolutely heartbroken

You could hear their laboured breaths and it made me #SAD

There was a pride flag in Wedding Bells 🏳️‍🌈 

While the chorus was singing, Peter and Jason were dancing together. Like those cute choreography wedding dances, spinning and dipping each other. Peter ran and jumped into Jason’s arms and Jason picked him up and spun him around full-on ice dance stationary lift style.

They were exchanging rings during the vows, but when Claire came in, Jason dropped the one that he was supposed to give to Peter.

During Touch my Soul when Ivy asks Jason if he’s ever “felt this way before”, Jason was leaning against Peter’s locker, he glanced at it before replying “Yeah, once”

Warning was one of the highlights of the show, by far (which I was utterly surprised by.

Claire was a vocal powerhouse. Like, wow, lady had pipes. I had an out of body experience listening to her sing

When the song finished the audience was silent for a moment, just stunned at what we just experienced. Then one guy said “WOW” really loud, then the audience went NUTS

Peter and Jason almost kissed at the end of Pilgrim's Hands before Jason spotted Ivy

“Loud, proud, and clear.” Sister Chantelle looked out into the audience The Office style.

During God Don’t Make No Trash, Sister Chantelle pointed out to the audience during the line “Every gay man” (A call out!)

Ivy went off to riff-town during the “How can I--” at the end of All Grown Up and it was magnificent

Nadia comforted Ivy at the end of the song and it was so tender

Jason and Nadia hugged at the end of Promise and it made me #SAD

The make it appear like Jason was standing in the light of the cross that was a fixed part of the set while he sang Once Upon a Time

The confessional booth was set on an angle, with Jason closer to the audience. So it felt like Father Flynn was disconnected from the audience/Jason

(I still miss the cello)

As Jason fell, Peter was just able to catch him. Peter was kneeling on the ground with Jason’s head resting on in his lap. Peter closed Jason’s eyes

A Glooming Peace was preformed with the ensemble standing in a semi-circle around Peter kneeling on the ground with Jason in his arms

The “And I forgive you, Father” in Absolution was said much slower than it is on the cast album, with Peter articulating every word. Which made me #SAD 

Moral of the story? Bare made me really sad, but I had so much fun and I wish I could go and see it again. And damn I really want to direct this show now!

Also their social media for this production has been SLAYING. They made an Instagram post with a picture the guy playing the Father Flynn reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” with the caption “Our resident priest is hard at work studying how to handle the raucous graduating class of St. Cecilia’s ✌” which askdjhfaksjd. Damn.

And I left a comment on their IG post about how Bare is my favourite show and how I’m grateful I am that they are producing the show and how excited I am to be emotionally devastated by it and replied with “we are so ready to emotionally devastate our sweetest audience member” which made me so soft wtf

[ladyloveandjustice]

Reflection on Attack on Titan: How the narrative failed its characters

I did a breakdown of how Attack on Titan failed the potential of its premise due to its commitment to being edgy fascist garbage, but I also want to talk about how it failed a bunch of characters who were brimming with potential.

(This is gonna be messy and loooong, because I have a lot of feelings. Someone on the last post noted my “rhetoric blows” and I will freely admit I’m not really trying for coherent “rhetoric” here, I’m just venting my frustration so I can get it all out of me and move on).

Yes, it wasn’t solely the premise that drew me and so many others to Attack on Titan and its potential. There were a lot of unique and exciting elements with the way this shonen manga handled its characters.

I said before that Isayama never cared about his characters, but that was a bit of a exaggeration. I think he did start out caring about some of them...it’s just he quickly got bored with them and started treating them solely as tools to serve the “plot” and the screwed message he wanted to impart.

Isayama does have one strength as a character writer- he excels at  showing characters who are messy, flawed and selfish but nevertheless sympathetic. Nobody in Attack on Titan is a classic unselfish “pure” hero, they are all deeply flawed. Isayama’s characters were compelling in the beginning because of that. He allowed his characters to exhibit cowardice, he allowed them to fail spectacularly, and that made Attack on Titan stand out. Despire the melodrama of their situations, actions and personalities, there’s a rawness to (most of) his characters that fits the horror of the setting.

Even the protag Eren, who a lot of people dislike or find easily the most boring character (honestly I found Levi the most boring though), has this ugliness to him that makes him distinct from the billion other teen boy protags in shonen. He is genuinely unstable and honestly a bit disturbing, as this collection of weird murderfaces he makes shows (behold my post popular aot post, ah memories).His obsession with killing Titans was unsettling, it was the classic determination of a shonen hero through a screwed up horror lens, this kid ain’t all right.

Historia especially resonated me because she was TRYING to be that classic pure heroine- but she was selfish like everyone else deep down. She just wanted to be SEEN as an pure-hearted martyr who sacrificed for others, when really all she was doing was giving into her suicidal urges. It was criticism of the very concept of the “immaculate woman”, and that’s pretty cool. So was the fact she was seen through by Ymir, someone who embraces selfishness in all other aspects of her life but is ultimately selfless when it comes to her love for Historia...that’s some good shit. It’s fantastic as a character concept, and Ymir and Historia’s initial character writing and backstory will stick with me because it was genuinely good in all its melodrama. 

Historia and Ymir were nuanced queer characters whose relationships were fleshed out well. I do believe Isayama put care into crafting their initial arcs and developing them.

But then we run into a problem. A problem that eventually we run into with every character in AOT. Isayama stops caring about them. After their initial big arcs or moments in the spotlight or backstory reveals, he just doesn’t know what to do with these characters anymore. So they completely disapppear from the manga or fade into the background only to matter again when he decides to kill them off for some cheap shock moment. Either that, or they just exist to further the narrative of how the military is cool and we have to exterminate all our enemies and blablabla.

 Because he ultimately cares about that narrative far, far more than he does giving these characters the full stories that resonate, make sense and are effectively paced. He's completely willing to undo all the character work he did previously if it means he can be edgy or impress his ideals on the reader.

That’s why Ymir and Historia have this dramatic parting that gets the audience pumped to see what happens to both of them and when they’ll reunite...only for Ymir to just completely disappear from the narrative, then be killed offscreen without even really re-entering the story again. That’s why Historia has this whole big arc about reclaiming her agency, resisting her abusive family and learning to live for herself...only to be intimidated into becoming Queen even though she’s not super into it, because she needs to serve the military and NOT live for herself after all, I guess? And oh, now she’s numbly accepted her duty to endlessly make babies for the sake of the nation! Turns out her real purpose is to be something for the other characters to be sad about. 

Isayama got bored with Historia’s arc and Ymir’s arc and their relationship. He may have fun coming up with characters backstories and the big dramatic moments, but once those are over? He doesn’t care enough to do the work to conclude their stories. He gets distracted by his next plot point, his next action scene. The characters are toys he discards or breaks for the sake of either some edgy ‘anyone can die!’ moment or to push forward whatever new stupid plot point he’s thought up for his fascist narrative. (Links to evidence of Isayama’s views in this post).

Even in the (dumb) sense of “oohhh doesn’t this impress life’s cruelty upon us”, Ymir’s death is a failure. When she’s been gone from the narrative so long, to have it suddenly be like “oh, she died” just makes for a reader feeling confused and cheated, not devastated. It becomes painfully clear she’s an afterthought to the author, a loose end that needed to be cut. Same with Sasha’s recent death, I saw no sign she’d been anything but background in the narrative for a long. looong time before she was killed off.

 Heck, look not further than Annie, who has now been trapped in crystal for what, 800 chapters? It’s been YEARS, both in universe and out. It’s honestly FUNNY at this point that she’s still fuckin’ in there, literally just frozen until Isayama can decide what he wants to do with her.. I hope the manga ends with everyone dead and then 1000 years later Annie emerges like “hey guys I’m back!” Then a meteor hits her or something. The intrigue surrounding her fizzled out a long time ago, yet Isayama still expects the reader to care whenever that hunk of rock shows up?

Let’s bring it around back to Eren. There were a lot of interesting directions he could have actually gone as a character, had he been forced to actually, y’know, deal with the fact he was channeling his grief in an unhealthy way or his worldview had ultimately been challenged at all. But Isayama actually agrees with Eren for the most part, he does think enemies should be exterminated without fail and genocide is cool and stuff. So Eren’s development throughout 800 chapters was just to ultimately get more and more obsessed with killing enemies, to the point where he doesn’t even enjoy seeing the ocean for long before deciding that was more important. Only his targets are definitely people now, and he doesn’t care about children or civilian casualties anymore, and yeah he’s screwed up, but doesn’t he have a point???? You can almost hear Isayama say this.

 Eren exemplifies how Isayama approaches character development. He allows his characters to get more ruthless, more calculating, more fucked up, more comfortable with killing and torture as time goes on, but they can’t develop in a positive way ever- if they start going in that direction, it’s time for them to either die or regress. Nobody’s allowed to find any sort of lasting happiness, nobody’s allowed to become softer or kinder. “Cowards” (like Armin or Sasha) can become “brave”, but they’ll eventually lose most of their softness and empathy too. But that will be excused at every turn, because that’s apparently the price, the sacrifice of being a soldier. It’s “necessary” and it’s something Isayama very obviously admires. “Bravery” trumps compassion, soldiers must be ruthless to win and in the end, any growth is meaningless.

To be clear, a lot of negative character development isn’t a bad thing and “anyone can die” narratives aren’t either (though both are very tricky to pull off without losing audience investment- if you know it’s all just gonna be suffering, why keep reading?). But even when your story has those elements, you, as an author, have to have some respect and perspective in regards to your characters and Isayama has neither. He AGREES that his characters terrible actions (like torture) are necessary, because he thinks what Japanese soldiers did to Korean civilians was A-OK too...so it all just comes off as sickening.

And in a story, even if you’re trying to impress that death is random and arbitrary, that your story’s world is dangerous for everyone, those deaths should still mean something to you. the author. Otherwise the reader can’t feel their impact. It shouldn’t be easy to kill off a character. It shouldn’t be simply because you’re bored, or don’t know what to do with them- yet Isayama has openly admitted what he does. A character ceasing to matter, and then dying, has no impact. A character must matter up until the moment they cease for their death to matter.

( And lbr, if “anyone” could really die in AOT, the four main characters wouldn’t have gotten a million miracle reprieves by now).

It’s not surprising it ended up this way, though. It’s not surprising a man who has no sympathy or compassion for victims of war crimes has no sympathy or compassion for his characters and slowly drains them of their humanity as the story goes on. His love of war and domination is more important to him than human beings, and that comes through in his narrative, where characterization takes a backseat to his love of depicting war and violence, of impressing its necessity on the reader.

The characters of Attack on Titan deserve better than to be embedded in this cynical, cheap, fascist narrative. Fortunately, there are a ton of stories out there, and you can find similar characters with authors who actually care about them and aren’t openly fascist. For instance, while thinking about Historia’s arc and how good it started out, I remembered that one of my favorite narratives has a very similar main character. If you like Historia and wish she had a better narrative, I encourage you to check out the anime or light novels for The Twelve Kingdoms.

Similar to Historia, Youko is raised in an oppressive environment and constructs this entire personality around the idea of being an ideal good girl who lives for others, even though deep down she didn’t really care much for the people she was pleasing. When she’s stranded in an unfamiliar world, she slowly finds who she really is- and she’s pretty hardcore. She comes into a royal position of power too, but needless to say, it’s handled much better than Historia’s arc in AOT. 

True, she’s not explicitly queer, but there’s no explicit love interest either (the anime does add a “crush”, but he disappears pretty quickly and she gets over him amazingly fast), and ton of strong female relationships in the story too, that don’t end with one party dying and the other becoming a baby machine. And it’s written by a woman who’s never openly supported war crimes, so. 

So yeah, there are so many better options than Attack on Titan, and so many better ways these character concepts can be used. If you’re as disappointed as I am, it’s important to remember that. These character were failed, but characters like them can still be given the narratives they deserve.

Here’s the final part of this series:

The final reflection on Attack on Titan: How the narrative failed its potential in regard to gender and queer themes.

[imaginedmelody]

I think I’m finally ready to try and write my “The Magicians” season finale reaction post.

I’ve been collecting my thoughts on this for the last almost-week, because I knew that this post would be a difficult one; it’s hard to sort through all the opinions and feelings and put them down in a way that makes sense. I’ll try to hit on my major takeaways under the readmore. Bear in mind that my reaction is mixed. Conflicted is the word I’ve been using. I really sympathize with the pain that much of the fandom is feeling, even if I don’t feel it on a level that’s the same (or perhaps comparable) to theirs. I’ll try to dig into that in this post a bit.

I’m a new viewer to this show, as I’ve said many times before. I tried to watch it two years ago, and found it confusing in that I felt like it failed to resonate with me even though I still felt strangely drawn to it. I would watch an episode, feel unsatisfied and only barely interested, but then the next day I would feel oddly compelled to watch the next one. After about 5 episodes of season 1, I gave up. I picked it back up again about 9 weeks ago; I guess I was one of the many viewers who came along because of 4x05, although I didn’t realize that was why I was pulled back in- I just started seeing more and more about the show on my social media again, and it was enough to make me want to give it another try.

This time, I was hooked. I marathon-watched the whole show in probably 4-5 weeks and loved almost every moment (except for a couple of the really distressingly disturbing ones). I was so moved by 3x05, “A Life in the Day,” that I wrote this post about how the show felt like a missing piece had slotted into place at the end of that episode; like a photo that you don’t realize is slightly out of focus until someone adjusts the resolution and it just resolves. I got caught up enough to livetweet somewhere around episode 7 or 8 of season 4, and have been enjoying my integration into the fandom, although I’m still very peripherally a part of it.

I say all this because, as a new viewer, the fallout of 4x13 has been...confusing. Not confusing as in “I don’t understand why this is happening,” but in the sense that the fandom’s collective grief can feel kind of alienating to new viewers. That’s not intentional on the part of seasoned fans, and it’s not something that anyone should feel responsible for or obligated to change. It’s just difficult because we have only just invested in the show. We may be devastated at the loss of Quentin, many of us for the same reasons longtime viewers are (the loss of queer representation, for instance, or the way it seemed to counteract the positive development of a mentally ill character). But at the same time, a lot of us are more positive overall, even if we think killing off that character was a bad choice. We’re still kind of wrapped up in our enthusiasm, so that our grief just feels like another strong emotion we’re feeling, rather than a betrayal. And it can be awkward because we don’t want to express that too boldly or strongly, because we don’t want to appear to be trivializing the grief of other fans. I think that’s an unfair position that the show, not the fans, puts us in. We’re already new to the community, and now we feel less engaged in what is very much a communal emotional response. Positivity feels like rubbing salt in other fans’ wounds. So we’re not sure where we stand.

I was in shock when the show killed off Quentin. Like most viewers, I couldn’t believe it. I waited for them to find a way to reverse it. It was like a hole forming in my heart when they didn’t. I mentioned on twitter later that night that I cry all the time when I watch TV and movies- literally, if something is in any way beautiful, or sad, or exciting, or happy, I’m getting teary-eyed. But once the credits roll and the story is done, my emotional response is usually finished too. If I’m gonna react to it in any other way, it’ll be intellectual (through meta or fanfic) rather than emotional.

But when this episode ended, I finished my cup of tea, went upstairs, and got in the shower. And all of a sudden, before I even knew it, I was crying. It had been 15 minutes since the episode ended and I was still emotional enough to cry. Since then, because I’m a glutton for emotion who likes to lean into anything that makes me feel strongly, I’ve rewatched the episode once and the “Take On Me” scene like eight times- and every single time I’ve cried, even if it’s just a little. It touches some raw emotional place in me that very few shows get to. And I think I’m in awe of that as much as I’m in pain because of it.

I never quite got to the outrage that other fans did, though. That could be for a number of reasons- less prolonged attachment as a new viewer (although I feel very attached to the show and characters); greater privilege to not feel personally attacked by the loss; just having more emotional energy to engage with the scene. But I felt simultaneously anguished and energized by the episode, including the death. It broke my heart, but it also pulled me in. It’s very confusing. I’m angry at how things increasingly seem to have been mishandled, and I’m disappointed at the fallout this has for the show and the fans, and I’m in disagreement with the validity of the choice. But I still feel engaged and almost excited by it. That’s a hard balance to reconcile.

It really does seem to me like the writers dropped the ball. The fact that they knew they were killing Quentin off bothers me, but actually, the thing that I find most galling is that the other actors weren’t in on the plan. We have it on good authority that they filmed a fake scene, where presumably Q comes back somehow, and all the actors were led to believe that was what was in the episode until two days before the finale, when they were told the truth for the first time. My question is: why? Did they not trust the actors to keep the secret? I can kind of understand faking out the audience, but why play that mind game with your actors, who are part of the creative team and should know what’s going on? Why deprive them of the chance to say goodbye to Jason Ralph as a fellow cast member? So far, in every interview, no one has really explained what the point of that fakeout was. If I was an actor on the show, I’d feel really upset about that.

The other thing that’s really been grinding my gears is something that I saw mentioned in comments before I ever saw it in context in the article (and thank you to everyone who helped me find the source). It’s a quote from John McNamara, one of the showrunners, from an article in the Hollywood Reporter, in which he says this about the decision to kill off Q:

“... in a way, I'm not sure what we would have done with the character had he lived.”

I took issue with that statement for two reasons. The first is from a writing craft perspective. I understand wanting to take risks and shake up expectations, and I understand that “kill someone off” is common writing advice when you get stuck in a project. But it’s my firm belief that the main character (and even on an ensemble show like this, yes, there is a clear lead character) should pretty much always be safe. Because the premise of the show is structured in some essential way around him; that’s why he’s the lead. And that’s why almost every show that gets rid of its main character, either by recasting or just removing and replacing with other characters, goes downhill in quality- because that original character was integral to the story.

I’ve said before that literally the only story I can think of that is better for having killed off its protagonist is friggin’ Julius Caesar. When I teach that play, we discuss at that moment in Act 3- and then again at the end of the play- what it means for the narrative if your title character dies halfway through his story. What it means that Marc Antony is the lead for the rest of the play. How Caesar is still so central to the plot even though he’s dead. Part of the reason this doesn’t work on TV- the reason the plot can’t still centralize the character they killed in the narrative- is because a play is a single self-contained entity that you consume all at once, and a TV series is, well, serialized. The show can’t keep centering a character who’s no longer present, because it wouldn’t resonate in a long-form narrative that you consume in small installments. That’s why shows that kill off characters don’t keep bringing them up. They throw in a couple of heartfelt moments that directly or indirectly reference the character, and then they move on and you’re supposed to let them go. A protagonist has to live to keep being important to the story.

So I am of the firm belief that if your main character has outlived his usefulness, the problem is with your narrative as a whole, not with that particular character. If you can’t think of anywhere meaningful for that character to go, you don’t need to kill him off- you need to restructure your whole story so that it’s responsive to him again. It doesn’t have to revolve around him all the time- the show has frequently centered around other characters prominently and effectively, and Q doesn’t have to be in the spotlight all the time- but if he’s no longer relevant? Your whole story has a problem.

But the second thing that aggravates me about that comment is this: not only do I think Q should not ever become decentralized and disconnected from his show’s narrative, I don’t think he has. The events of this season provided so much room to develop that character. He learned his discipline (minor mendings), which has tremendous practical usefulness as well as symbolic significance. “Escape From the Happy Place” reopened a potential relationship that contains a whole wellspring of emotional resonance as well as complication. His father died- you can do a lot with the grief related to that. His reconnection with Alice felt hollow to me, but even that could be useful narratively (especially if she goes on to lead the Library, which could create a layer of separation and potential for either teamwork or conflict of interest that could sustain several intriguing narratives). Even his tendency toward suicidal self-sacrifice could have been brought up; the conversation he had with Penny about whether he was trying to be a hero or just finally finding a way to kill himself could be had after a failed self-sacrifice attempt just as meaningfully as a successful one.

Quentin has been filled with potential this entire season in the storyline. All of this plus his emotional reckoning with Fillory in the scene where he brings the garden back to life... it seemed like the writers spent the whole season re-establishing all the potential Q had. It didn’t read like a season in which the writers didn’t know what to do with him any more. So the decision to kill him off does seem purely like an effort to challenge themselves as writers and wrong-foot the fans. Which I don’t think is enough of a reason to do it.

Because here’s the thing: I’m a writer too, and I understand that the dichotomy of pursuing your own writing vision and capitulating to the fans’ wants and needs is a delicate one. Writers hate being told what to write, and with social media and fan conventions and other very close forms of engagement, fans have more ways to make their desires known than perhaps ever before. They have every right to make the choice that supports their creative vision, and to do things that force them to stretch their limits as creators. But this feels like it went wildly off its mark. It feels less like an experiment and more like a careless move, and I think they could have approached it a lot better.

I wouldn’t rule out seeing Q again on the show one day. I think if they’re willing to fake us all out once, they’d do it again. I’m comforted by the fact that they appear to have consulted the author early in the process and gotten his blessing, although his comments since then seem to walk back his involvement or contradict what the showrunners have said. (Whether that’s because they’ve overstated his involvement or enthusiasm, or whether he was involved in the decision and is now trying to distance himself from the fallout, it’s impossible to say.)

What is less heartening for me is that some of these writers/creators come from Supernatural, a show that has gone on for far too long and has been retreading tired old ground for years. I only watched to about season 8, but it just feels like an endless cycle of similar plot arcs and killing off and resurrecting the same characters over and over again. The Magicians, admittedly, feels a lot more well-crafted, so I don’t think they’d get as lazy as SPN seems to be- but it’s still a worry, all the same.

(Side note: I am often adamant that unless it’s a legacy franchise like Doctor Who, most shows should intentionally be constructed to be a maximum of 5-7 seasons. I think a lot of broadcast shows are less high-quality because they are just vague pitches that get riffed into a show; the writers and creators don’t come into it with an endpoint in mind, so the show goes on as long as they can add any material at all to it or until they get cancelled, whichever comes first. That means that the plot feels aimless and unstructured. The difference between “prestige TV” and “regular TV” is not just better writing and acting overall- it’s that those shows tend to have a very defined arc, and they know where they’re going, so everything is in service of a common idea. Not just a vague and easily sellable premise that can have a ton of stuff derived from it with little effort. I think The Magicians sits above most broadcast shows in quality, but this is where it is starting to show its weak points. And that’s why I think the creators need to be very deliberate about making sure everything going forward contributes to a very defined arc.)

So that’s where I am right now. Emotionally a wreck; disappointed in the process of this choice and feeling the grief other fans feel; strangely invigorated at the same time? Unsure where to go from here, really. Still committed to watching the show as much as I ever have been, but wary at the same time. It’s complicated. But I’m ready to embrace the complexity of it.

[curriebelle]

Critical Role and Queer Perspective

There’s a little Critical Role analysis I’ve been thinking about that probably won’t fit in my thesis, mostly because it’s too narrow in scope. I wanted to talk about it, though, because it’s been one of the most interesting transitions to watch in terms of how the show thinks about its queer characters.

I have no idea where I read the comment, because it was a very long time ago, but I also remember it vividly. A Critter explained that Gilmore’s scenes made them uncomfortable, because Gilmore fell into the trope that “Queer People Are Funny”. That’s the very 90s-sitcom-esque tradition of writing jokes where the punchline is that the character is A Gay. It’s a problem because it makes people not take queerness seriously - being gay is literally a joke. The first time I saw this comment was when the Whitestone Arc was first airing, but I’ve seen it repeated here and there throughout the run.

I don’t think that argument holds true anymore. Critical Role might not be perfect, but its attitude toward queer representation is not only above average, but also constantly improving. The show started with its singular gay character, Gilmore, who first showed up in Episode 14, and by the end of the series we have a non-binary emperor, two queer happily-ever-afters (Larry and Tary, and Kima and Allura), and multiple characters confirming queer sexualities. More importantly, these characters aren’t just token sexual minorities - they’re quite varied and interesting, and have stories that don’t revolve around their queerness, but don’t ignore their queerness either. The cast does make mistakes with these characters sometimes, but they are very eager to correct them when they do.

I think a really good point of contrast is when Scanlan drinks the love potion and falls briefly in love with Percy near the end of the campaign. That entire scene is utterly hilarious, but it’s no longer made hilarious by relying on the Queer People are Funny trope. It’s hilarious because Scanlan is over the top in his declarations (”your eyebrows...I want to lick them”), because Percy is constantly miffed that Vox Machina is shocked that someone finds him attractive, and because Vex is trying to manage the whole thing and failing not to threaten Scanlan’s life.

This is obviously a matter of opinion, but while the argument that Critical Role uses the Queer People Are Funny trope doesn’t hold true now, back when Episode 14 first aired it sort of was true. For future context, if you didn’t know, I’m queer myself and this episode didn’t bother me at all at the time. Still, I could certainly see how it would put other people off, and it does make me a little uncomfortable in hindsight.

In Episode 14 there are two big moments where the show wrings a joke out of people being queer. The first one is Gilmore’s introduction. The party prepares Vax to flirt with Gilmore for discounts, and they erupt into giggles when Gilmore comes swishing in, and any time Vax initiates flirtation or contact there’s more laughter. I think it’s important to compare this scenes with Vax’s first love scenes with Keyleth in Whitestone - which were notoriously awkward - because it becomes pretty clear after doing that that Vax flirting with Gilmore was A Joke. I don’t think it was meant to be mean-spirited - the players loved Gilmore and the fans did too, pretty much instantly - but there was something giggle-inducing about Matt and Liam trying to out-flirt each other.

The far more uncomfortable moment in Episode 14 is when Kima and Allura reunite. Matt describes them hugging and talking, and Orion - whose character Tiberius has a crush on Allura - starts grumbling that it’s “the story of his life”, implying that Kima and Allura are either together or interested in each other. This one is less “queer people are funny” and more “Orion gets weirdly pissed at his dungeon master for implying a women is attracted to another woman instead of him.” Matt’s initial reaction was to claim the two were ‘just good friends’. Orion’s reaction felt bizarrely possessive and objectifying - like he was upset that the character he’d ‘called dibs’ on, Allura, had the gall to flirt with someone else in front of him. Matt’s denial doesn’t strike me as a bad thing - he was more defending himself from Orion saying “Seriously, Matthew?” - but regardless, he eventually changed his mind on what kind of ‘good friends’ they were.

So we’ve got two early scenes that fall loosely into poor representations of queer characters - one turning gay men into jokes, and one objectifying queer women. In my mind these are more bruises than deep cuts, mistakes that make some people uncomfortable and that are worth pointing out, but that don’t condemn the creators or the show as hateful. It’s worth pointing out that the show does have queer players on it (at least one, possibly more), who didn’t find the scenes disturbing either. The most interesting thing about these moments, though, is how they triggered plotlines that continued throughout Critical Role - plotlines that actually transformed the show’s representation in a really neat way.

Let’s back up a moment. CritRoleStats has previously pointed out that Critical Role now comprises more content than The Simpsons. We’ve spent a lot of time with Vox Machina and their allies; as much time as The Simpsons has spent as an icon of popular culture. In fact, it’s pretty much only sitcoms that can rival Critical Role in terms of sheer runtime and content, but their formulas for churning out this content are very different. Sitcoms are purposefully written so that each episode starts with the status quo being disrupted and ends with the status quo being somewhat restored by the end, with a few lessons learned along the way. Think about i:; nearly forty years later, none of the Simpsons have aged a day. Other long-running shows (like Law and Order or Star Trek) can wring years and years of programming out of single-episode stories, each one forming their own unique adventure. Sometimes the characters grow between seasons a little, and some are killed off or leave the show, but the characters largely remain consistent so their adventures can continue in perpetuity.

Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, by their very design, have to progress. Characters gain experience, learn more about the world, explore it, make new friends, and develop relationships. Change is anathema to sitcoms, but integral to tabletop gameplay.

And alongside the players’ concerted efforts to get better at queer representation, I think this sense of progression was what changed how Critical Role thought about queer characters. The other key factor was that the players are both the writers and actors for their PCs. They know their motivations intimately, and they write their lines on the spot from what they feel like their character would do. And there is only so long that you can inhabit a character before you have to stop taking them as a joke.

I think the moment that drives this home hardest for me is still Vax ‘breaking up’ with Gilmore in Episode 38. He takes Gilmore aside in a tavern, says he’s enjoyed the flirting and that he’s ‘been curious’, but he can’t take it further because he’s in love with someone else. Gilmore is hurt, but gracious, and leaves the tavern. A brief pall hangs over the group after that, until the game moves on and the pain fades a little. Gilmore remained funny, and charming, and bombastic, and flashy, and lovable, but that was a moment he utterly stopped being a joke. His infatuation with Vax, or his love, or whatever you want to call it, was not funny anymore. It was heartbreaking in the way that only love can be, queer or otherwise. As painful as the scene was, it was a huge step in everyone’s ability to understand how to play queer characters. Vax was devastated that he had to break Gilmore’s heart, and Liam still identifies Vax’s biggest regret as “causing Gilmore any pain.” Moreover, Liam was more open and enthusiastic about Vax’s bisexuality as the campaign went on after that scene.

And after that scene, Gilmore disappears in the dragon attack. The group rescues him, and Matt reveals that he nearly died trying to save Uriel’s children. In the Chroma Conclave arc we learn he crafts his own spells, seen when he kills the assassin during the Rakshasa attack and when he helps create the Whitestone barrier. The party meets his parents in Ank’Harel, and learns he changed his name to help his business succeed. We learn during the fight with Thordak that he’s a runechild sorcerer, one of Matt’s homebrew classes. It was like something had snapped, and Gilmore suddenly unfolded into three full dimensions of characterization. Of course, the storyline had gotten more dark in general, but some characters - think Viktor or the mapmaker - remained jokes, no matter how dire their situations were. Not so with Gilmore. The events of the campaign, and the party’s investment in Gilmore’s well-being and their constant instinct to seek his advice or his help, allowed Matt to play him more and to get to know him better. We saw how he reacted to tragedy and pressure and the destruction of his livelihood. He became perhaps the most beloved and fleshed-out of all Matt’s NPCs, to the point where he - along with Cass and Kaylie - was Vecna’s chosen sacrifice to hurt Vox Machina the most.

Coincidentally, Kima went through the exact inverse of this development. In the Underdark, she rebuffed Grog and Scanlan’s advances (both of them hit on her quite a bit) and seemed much happier to be reunited with Allura. The joke that Kima and Allura were a thing began to seem, over time, like much less of a joke. Fans (bless Charlotte Sandmael, for one) helped persuade Matt into getting on that ship. At the same time, though, Matt wouldn’t have gotten them together for kicks or just to please shippers. Instead, he let Kima and Allura develop through the story of the Conclave’s return. The dragons from their past brought them back together again. We saw snippets of their guilt and panic and mutual support, and even of their relationship in less hectic times (”you didn’t have to wear the dress, Kima, it was just a suggestion-”). The storyline would likely have fleshed out Kima regardless, due to her history with the Conclave, but in getting to know both Kima and Allura better, I think Matt eventually saw what the fans were seeing, and he realized that the pair of them falling in love wasn’t really a joke after all.

So, Gilmore started as a beloved if somewhat stereotypical queer cameo, and he evolved into a well-rounded and absolutely adored queer character; and two characters that likely would have been well-rounded regardless naturally developed a queer relationship out of their storylines. I think that happened because Matt is, by all evidence, an extremely empathetic person, and as a dungeon master he strives to understand all the characters he creates inside and out. Look at how well he understands Sylas and Delilah’s relationship: they’re sympathetic and understandable, despite the fact that they’re also despicable. He gets deep, deep inside their heads. And when you get that deep inside the head of someone who is openly queer, you learn to write and play them in a wonderfully rich way; and when you get that deep inside the head of someone whose orientation you don’t know, you might find out that queerness is a part of their personality.

Which brings me, finally, to Tary. I think Tary is just about the pinnacle of this development arc across the story. Up until Tary, the only player character who had a really in-depth queer storyline to explore was Vax, which almost accidentally emerged from him treating Gilmore as a flirtatious comedic bit and then realizing, through roleplay, how strong and conflicted his feelings were. Interesting in its own right, but also more or less concluded as a storyline by Episode 57. By the time Tary shows up in Episode 85, though, Kima and Allura are together, Gilmore’s super well-explored as a character, and the non-binary J’mon has been introduced. Most of the other characters were sort of locked into female-male relationships at this point (or into Epic Single-ness, in the case of Grog Strongjaw), and regardless of their identities (bisexual Vex and Panlan Scanlan) they didn’t get as much time to explore the stories of their orientation as Vax did. So when Scanlan left and Sam had an opportunity to explore a new character, he ended up with Taryon Darrington, who was later established as gay.

The most excellent thing about Tary, besides literally everything else about Tary, is that I still don’t know if Sam knew he was gay from the beginning or if he figured it out along the way. I can’t remember what Sam has said about this, and in a way it almost doesn’t matter. Tary only had about fifteen episodes to explore who he was, and in that time he had a really compelling and honest series of fears and revelations about his sexuality. To me, Tary is pretty much the pinnacle of all the hard work Critical Role has done to try and understand and play queer characters more sensitively. As a character, Tary is far more than his queerness, but he also has chances to explore that queerness in a very real way - and he even gets a happy ending!

And yeah, some things about Tary were a joke - even some things about Gilmore and Kima and Allura are still jokes - but the other thing about love is that, along with being heartbreaking, it can be pretty hilarious. Kima gets grumpy about how perfect Allura’s hair is in the morning. Tary morosely dubs his lost love affair “Larry and Tary”. Gilmore teleports into a hallway where Vax is (for some reason) naked, and cheerfully asks if it’s his birthday.

I think the reason I’ve been so proud to watch all this development is that it doesn’t just explode that Queer People Are Funny joke from the inside, it actually fixes one of the most difficult things about it. Because queer people want representation that doesn’t make a joke out of their identities, it can sometimes be hard to write funny or happy stories about being queer, and that’s part of why we end up with endless numbers of queer tragedies. And that sucks, because queer characters seriously lack for happy endings. They don’t even get to have fun, in some universes. 

But being queer is fun. It’s fun and it’s funny. I loved the part where Kima was complaining to Allura about her dress. My first girlfriend was a wonderfully creative seamstress, and she and I used to cosplay together, so - let’s just say it brought back some nice memories. Critical Role remedied the problems that the Queer People are Funny trope created almost as a direct result of its format - as a result of spending so much time trying to understand those characters. Queer characters can be funny again, and they can be tragic, and they can be well-rounded and human. I think there’s a magnificent capacity for greater understanding here. It makes me very, very excited for the next campaign. If they came this far in round one, I really hope round two nets us a queer player character or three, and I can’t wait to meet them.

[love-takes-work]

The Answer Outline & Review

Here are some rambly thoughts on the lovely children's book The Answer, which I reviewed on Goodreads and Amazon the day it came out.

I preordered the book on Amazon as soon as it was announced, but it did not spontaneously appear in my home at midnight so I also bought the eBook because I am weak. (Whatever, they deserve my money.)

I’m one of those embarrassingly huge fans of this show so it was kind of a given that I was going to love this book. But let me tell y'all why it’s good and why it’s important.

This is Ruby and Sapphire’s story of love and freedom. I think we all know that a children’s storybook that’s about a “she” falling in love with a “she” is bound to get some raised eyebrows in a world that thinks relationships like theirs can never be innocent, but I would prefer not to focus on that much at all.

I just want to say that it’s so vital that children see these relationships in the same context that they see cross-sex relationships--and it’s not JUST so kids who have same-sex crushes and attractions can see themselves and know they can get fairy tale endings too. It’s also for the rest of you--and if those of you who aren’t queer can imagine growing up with no books about people like you, you might start to get the idea.

But you might not be able to really understand, because you probably CAN’T imagine how devastating it is--when there don’t seem to be nice words that describe you, or when futures for people like you don’t seem to exist, or when you want to know where you are in the literature people get upset, or when people talk to you like it either doesn’t matter that you’re invisible or that you’re disgusting for wanting that.

We want to be in stories because stories are how humanity talks to itself.

If we aren’t in them, we also learn very young that we don’t truly get to participate in human life.

So I want to say thank you to everyone who made it possible for something like this to exist. I’m so happy, but also relieved--and a little exasperated that something this sweet and pure took this long to get here because some people look at it and don’t see it for what it it is.

So what is it?

Yes, this story features the beginning of the love between Ruby and Sapphire, though it still doesn’t really delve into that. We see very little of their time together.

We see them both being sort of in awe of each other--Ruby being amazed that Sapphire would want to be around someone like her when she’s an aristocrat and has amazing powers to see beyond time, and Sapphire being amazed that Ruby’s courage upended what she thought was inevitable--and we get a peek at the way they look at each other.

What we do see more of is their decision to become a Fusion together--the ability the Gem characters have to meld into each other and become another person who represents their relationship. (But also the new Gem will have her own thoughts and feelings, her own new appearance, and her own attitude built from what her component Gems inspire in each other.)

In Sapphire and Ruby’s story, I think the Fusion relationship is a unique one--not just because she was the first of her kind in her society, but because the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire is now forever changed by how they feel about becoming another entity together. They will eventually fully love each other, but that love will always be influenced by what they’ve experienced as a Fusion.

And everything about their relationship is about possibility, opportunity, novelty, freshness, and power. Rubies in Gem society are supposed to be simple soldiers who do what they’re told and fight with their comrades. Sapphires in Gem society are supposed to be wise seers who don’t let their emotions affect what happens next.

When Ruby made a choice that Rubies aren’t supposed to make, Sapphire helplessly watched a future develop that wasn’t in the plan. And both of them found what they’d rather be instead.

I really appreciate that there was such a strong “supposed to” that the characters challenged without quite meaning to, and that leaving what they were accustomed to did cause them some distress. They had to find something new to be now that Ruby couldn’t do what Rubies do and Sapphire couldn’t do what Sapphires do.

They realized there are multiple “supposed to’s” for Gems like them, and fusing together into someone who had no “supposed to’s” (because she wasn’t supposed to exist) must have made it so much more joyous to explore what lay ahead.

The art is pretty special--lots of unsettling images (though nothing too scary), lots of beautiful images, and a different style from the cartoon–it’s simplified and stylized, but it still gets plenty of emotion onto those little faces. The backgrounds are lovely as they generally are in the show, and the characters commenting on the text in a meta fashion and talking to each other from little alcoves (Sapphire above, Ruby below) was really powerful.

There’s narration, but there’s also Sapphire and Ruby saying how they felt about what was happening, and expressing opinions about each other’s statements and caring about each other’s distress. Eventually, they go into each other’s chambers, comment on how they feel, and share their perspectives. It seems simple but it’s quite a nuanced metaphor and I think a lot of children will understand it despite the complexity.

Speaking of complexity, there are some concepts here that I think render this book most appropriate for people who have context from watching the TV show. The fusion concept isn’t presented all that accessibly to new fans, and if you haven’t seen the show before you don’t know that when Gems’ physical form is destroyed, they reform later (if their Gem isn’t smashed).

You don’t get introduced to Pearl even though she’s there, and you have no context for the illustration of Blue Diamond (and her Pearl), and even though Garnet is mentioned in the online description of the book, she’s not called by name in the story itself (just like in the episode).

It’s also a little unclear in the book (but not the cartoon) why the other Gems were furious at them for fusing, but I guess the story had to be kept simple. There’s also some complex language in the book--vocabulary words children in the target group probably won’t see in school for a few more years--but the presentation makes me think they will have context to pick it up. I remember doing that a lot as a kid with children’s books that slipped in an advanced word here and there.

I was hoping for a couple things I didn’t get, but I don’t blame books for not fulfilling expectations they didn’t promise to fulfill. I was really hoping to hear a little more about the moment of Sapphire and Ruby’s first fusion, because in the show fusion is supposed to be about being on the same wavelength, and it seemed almost incongruous that they could have fused at that moment amidst all that confusion. If they did, they must have temporarily wanted the same thing.

I know what Ruby wanted--to save Sapphire--but I would have loved to see a glimpse of Sapphire wanting to be saved rather than just being sort of blindsided by the rescue. I would have been really interested to see more of that moment of escape into their unheard-of spontaneous relationship--the action that changed who they were figuratively and literally (not to mention saving the planet).

The overall package is really precious and looks the way it should--like an age-appropriate, fairy-tale-esque storybook that doesn’t have anything strange or inappropriate at all. I can’t even imagine reading this to a child and having them stop me to ask “wait, ARE THEY TWO GIRLS??” because it’s just so smooth and well told, and the characters’ casually presented embraces and nonchalant closeness uses the same cues we’d expect to see on a Disney princess dancing with her prince. It’s just Not. An. Issue. Not in the book. Outside of the book, I imagine it will be. I hope the hubbub it creates is primarily positive.

And now, of course, it’s made even more clear in this book that Garnet doesn’t ask questions in the show because Rose told her not to and she took it quite literally. (She seems to get around asking questions with tricky wording, though, like instead of “What did you see?” she’ll say “Tell me what you saw.”) If you already ARE the answer, what questions could you need to ask?

And I’ve got to say Rebecca Sugar dedicating the book to Ian Jones-Quartey is really sweet.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

[bertann]

5 Things I’ve Learned

This isn’t the kind of post I usually write, but I’ve been thinking about where I am in life and I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned:

1. One of the most life changing thing I’ve realized is that people are just as worried about things as you are. While you’re worrying about what they think of you, they’re more worried about what you think of them. We’re all just giant meat balls of anxiety. That old saying of “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them” works for more than just spiders and snakes.

2. Those panic attacks you have before making a huge decision that may change your life are only momentary, and the strength you get from conquering it will make you a stronger person.

3. Putting yourself first isn’t selfish. It took me 23 years to put myself and my wants and needs first. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself to make sure everyone else’s needs are met. 

4. Try to learn something new every day, every person you meet has something new to teach you. Surround yourself with teachers.

5. When an opportunity presents itself, don’t let your fear hold you back.

I’m going to tell you guys a little story. So as many of you know, about a year ago (holy shit has it been that long?) after solving the PLL mystery my friend Nick and I were invited down to California by Marlene. We were going to meet Marlene for lunch, meet the cast, watch them film, and have a personal tour of the PLL set before it got taken down. Sounds amazing right? I’ll let you guys in on a little secret- I wasn’t going to go. 

Yes, you read that right. I wasn’t going to go. At first, I told Nick to go on without me and tell everyone I said hi- that I was taking 4 classes that term and I would be too busy to make it, that I didn’t have the money. It was true, I had no money and a lot of work to do in those classes, but here’s the thing... It was also an excuse not to go because I felt like somehow the hours of research, writing out theories, making videos, and watching the show weren’t enough to warrant me meeting the people I looked up to. I didn’t feel worthy.

I remember quite clearly. I was working on a script and shooting schedule for one of my classes and I just stopped what I was doing and asked the simplest and minuscule of questions... “Why not?” Something in my head switched, like there was some dusty old lever in the back of my brain that was never turned on before. Call it an epiphany or whatever, but finally realizing that I was the only person who was holding me back from everything I ever wanted to do was the greatest, scariest, most intense realization I’ve had in my life. Because it literally changed my life.

So, I took the leap. I messaged Nick and said I was in, and then I worked my ass off to get down to California to meet Marlene, Norman, and the amazing cast and crew. And guess what? I had the time of my life, and it gave me the drive and inspiration to work harder than I ever had before. I remember walking out of Stage 6 with Nick, we just kept turning to each other asking ourselves if all of this really happened. It did. And I have the visitors pass and pictures to prove it. 

Another even more life changing opportunity also went this route in March of this year. Some of you may know the whole Commander Lexa debacle that happened last year, and if you don’t- I’ll give you a quick summary. So, I had been watching a CW show called “The 100″ for a while and just like everyone in the fandom- I had fallen in love with the lesbian commander on the show named Lexa. Being that I am gay, (and every gay person can attest to this...) I search for any sort of positive representation to see myself in something, to find a character like Lexa wasn’t just rare, it was unprecedented. She was strong, powerful, badass, smart, while still being compassionate and loving, something I see in so many of my friends who identify as LGBT but never get to see. 

And, just like every other show, movie, video game, book, and piece of media out there- The 100 chose to end Lexa’s life in the most heinous, insensitive, and disgusting way possible. I don't know why Lexa was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but following her death- nearly half of the queer women on television were murdered and killed off. 

What came out of the devastation was a convention called “Clexacon”. It was put together by the fans, for the fans, and was going to be held in Las Vegas on the anniversary of Lexa’s death. Some of you may have been following my blog back when Lexa died, and may have seen some of the things I was posting- but one of those people who actually saw what I had been posting was a documentary filmmaker who liked what I had to say. Alexia got in contact with me on twitter and asked if I was a writer, I replied yes and that was it- we were friends from then on. Now, what does this have to do with my story?

Well, It turns out that Alexia was going to be head of the photography/videography department at Clexacon. I had offhandedly mentioned that I had been a photographer for 10 years but didn’t have any intention of going because again, I was going to school full time, didn’t have the money, and I didn’t have a working camera. She asked to see some of my work, so I linked her to a few of my shots- she complimented them and said I could probably teach her how to work her camera. I replied of course and asked what model camera it was... Ironically it happened to be one of my favorite cameras to shoot with. So, what does Alexia do? She asked me for my address. “My address, why?” I asked her. “Because, I want to give it to you.” 

I sat there at my computer, stunned. I repeatedly tried to tell her I couldn’t accept it, that it was too nice of a gift. I mean this camera body is something I couldn’t afford in my wildest fucking dreams and there was a woman who I had never met before and she was just going to give it to me with no questions asked. So she asked me again if I would go to Clexacon and be a staff photographer with her... And I stopped for a second and again asked myself “Why not?”, this time the answer was a profound “Fuck it. I’m doing it.”

And again, I worked my ass off to go to Clexacon. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this trip singlehandedly changed my life. I met so many people there that would eventually become my closest friends, supporters, and inspirations. One of the most important connections I made there was with someone who would eventually become my producer. And this leads me to where I am today.

Right now I’m taking 4 classes, I have 3 short films completed, I’m working on completing two different webseries, and I just started working on a feature length sci-fi script. Two weeks from today I’ll be down in L.A. for the second time in the last 3 months to start filming two of the short films I wrote. And guess what? I still go to a psychiatrist every week to make sure I keep making decisions that will better myself and not go back to hiding out in my bedroom wondering “What if?” instead of “Why not?”

Don’t let fear and anxiety keep you from achieving your dreams. I have no idea where I would be right now had I not changed my mind a year ago, but this is one thing in my life where I can decidedly say- I’m fine with not knowing the answer to that question.

-Rachel

[voidingintotheshout]

Coronavirus Survival Kit

Introduction / Explanation: Okay, so if you’ve read this far then you’re at least intrigued at getting ebooks that you can read on your phone or other mobile device for free. The following links are on Project Gutenberg. That’s a site that offers no-frills versions of books in the public domain. They have more books than you’ll every read, and many of them are very obscure. Since many of you may be practicing social distancing or quarantine because of the crisis, I thought I would use my English degree to highlight some books from the collection that will entertain or illuminate your lives and will each take up as much space on your phone as a 90-second song or 30-second video—so almost no space.

A Word on the Formats: The two main formats you need to know about are MOBI/KINDLE and EPUB. Essentially, if you’re planning to read the book on the kindle app/device, then you should click/tap on the KINDLE/MOBI link. If you are planning to read it on any other reader app, then you should click the EPUB link. When I say link, that’s the thing that says EPUB and is underlined. Click the link on your device and your device should ask you if you want to open/download it in—well, whatever app you have on your device. How this works on your phone/device may vary, but you’re going to tap/download the book, then tell the phone what reader app is opening this file. Then, boom; you have a free book to read.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters: A collection of interconnected tales as told by the dead in a local graveyard. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1280

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe: Contains most of the classics he’s known for: The purloined letter, The fall of the House of Usher, Silence: a fable, The masque of the Red Death, The cask of Amontillado, The pit and the pendulum, The premature burial & The tell-tale heart. A great place to start. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2148

In Morocco by Edith Wharton: A travel narrative of a westerner’s forays into Muslim Morocco in 1917. I’ve only just started it, but it’s so well written. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39042

My Ántonia by Willa Cather: Love & longing in the rural midwest. Nobody paints a picture with words like Willa. Also, she was in the LGBTQ community. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19810

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust: Book One of Remembrance of Things Past. A richly detailed study of place and characters that does require patience, but rewards those with the ability to know a character more deeply than you know yourself. He also was one of the first major writers that wrote about gay life and relationships, based, ahem, on personal experiences. Although it’s worth knowing that this book deals with his childhood where he was a shy, sensitive boy in a very wealthy household. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7178

Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf: An early collection by the queer modernist master. Although more well-known for her novels, her short stories are a great place to start because you can get more of a sense of what themes she comes back to and how she tells stories. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29220

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave by William Wells Brown: A great slave narrative, and a good one to start with if you’ve never read one. I like that he recounts the events vividly, but journalistically, so it’s up to the reader to pause at the horrors he was all to familiar with. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15132

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: Naturally it’s about a dude traveling in time, but what’s revealed says a lot about how Wells saw the human story evolving. The section about the subterranean species stays with you. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: Aliens come over and kick our asses. Wait, what’s that? *cough, cough* OH NO! IS THAT RELEVANT SOCIAL COMMENTARY?!?! I THINK IT IS!! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Man makes a monster out of corpses, but, wait for it—something goes amiss. The great thing about this book/tale is that it can be said to be about so many different things. Mass production, A.I., hubris, nature versus nurture, bad parenting, and/or whatever else you think the monster represents. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84

Pride and Prejudice by Stone Cold Jane Austen: She is, without doubt, the classic author that almost everyone likes more than they think they will. It’s got romance and period drama. Very likable. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A short story about how women are robbed of their free-will by opinionated men to the point that it makes them crazy. So… um… not at all relevant now or anything, LOL. Seriously, a great feminist novella. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1952

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: In 1665 the plague swept through London, claiming over 97,000 lives. Daniel Defoe was just five at the time of the plague, but he later called on his own memories, as well as his writing experience, to create this vivid chronicle of the epidemic and its victims. 'A Journal' (1722) follows Defoe's fictional narrator as he traces the devastating progress of the plague through the streets of London. Here we see a city transformed: some of its streets suspiciously empty, some - with crosses on their doors - overwhelmingly full of the sounds and smells of human suffering. And every living citizen he meets has a horrifying story that demands to be heard. — So, super relevant for today. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/376

Jane Eyre, An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë: Another writer that stands the test of time. If you didn’t read this in school, perhaps you can amuse yourself with this great, doomed love story. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1260

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: The biggest, most bloated adventure story of them all. It’s got prison breaks, pirates, fighting, massive amounts of treasure and a revenge plot that takes literally decades and about eight hundred pages to get through. It’s probably the longest book that you’ll ever fly thorough. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1184

Books to Read to School-Age Kids:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: A slice of life story about a child following a bunny down a hole into a hallucinogenic fantasyland. I mean, who hasn’t this happened to? Very relatable and filled with social commentary that’s still discussed today. Read this and understand the Red Queen Theorem! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: My mom’s favorite book from when she was a girl. It’s about a horse. So if your kid loves horses, this is your book. I have not read it, so I have no idea if it has a sad ending, but y’all can learn & grow together / spaced six feet apart. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/271