#understanding the secret queerness of horror and the overlooked histories

[rollforjackass]

no but i LOVE 'undercover' queer horror. stuff you grow up with as weird cult classics that are widely regarded as goofy and campy and a little bit terrible but they're no less iconic and then you grow up and learn that the creators are queer and see the story through that lens and understand the specific nexus of trauma and rage and loss and loneliness and otherness and joy and power and passion and love and defiance and radical self-acceptance that feeds every character and monster and shapes everything from their choices to their forms. LOVE that shit.

[duckprintspress]

Intersex Awareness Day: 6 Book Recommendations!

October 26th is the annual Intersex Awareness Day! Considering how many millions of people in the world are intersex, it’s depressing how rare it is to find books by intersex people or that feature intersex characters. Our crew of contributors to these recommendations list knew of six we’d recommend. As always, representation may be explicit or implied, so is potentially open to interpretation. Note that some intersex people consider themselves queer and some do not. We opted to include these books under “queer” for the tagging and shelving systems we use, but we do so with the understanding that not all intersex people are queer and that being intersex doesn’t automatically mean a person is queer. The contributors to the list are Nina Waters, Meera S. and an anonymous contributor.

At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender: Life Lessons from a 50-Year-Old After Two Decades of Self-Discovery by Shou Arai

At age 30, Shou Arai came to a realization; they had no gender. Now they were faced with a question they’d never really considered: how to age in a society where everything is so strongly segregated between two genders? This autobiographical manga explores Japanese culture surrounding gender, transgender issues, and the day to day obstacles faced by gender minorities and members of the LGBTQIA+ community with a lighthearted, comedic attitude.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license…records my first name simply as Cal.”

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

Nabari No Ou by Yuhki Kamatani

Apathetic schoolboy Miharu Rokujou is content to meander through life in the sleepy village of Banten. But his quiet existence is shattered when the Grey Wolves of Iga, a powerful ninja clan, attempt to kidnap him in broad daylight. Only then does Miharu discover that the ultimate power of the hidden ninja realm – a power that can do both great good and great harm – is sealed within his body. As battles erupt among rival ninja clans seeking to control him, Miharu must overcome his apathy and learn the ways of the ninja if he wants any shot at survival.

Ring by Kōji Suzuki

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece’s inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society’s fears to a rural Japan – a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic–haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape’s mystery before it’s too late – for everyone – assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

The Day of Revolution by Mikiyo Tsuda

Kei Yoshikawa is a feisty young boy, troubled by problems at home and annoyed at school. One day after a sudden fainting spell, Kei is examined by the doctor and given shocking news – he is actually supposed to be a girl!

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West – a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

What are your favorite books with intersex representation? Please do tell us, we’d love to read more!

You can view this rec list as a shelf on the Duck Prints Press Goodreads profile! Or shop the three that are in print and available on Bookshop.org by visiting our affiliate shop.

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[crunchybones-jpg]

Ayo, guess who finally decided to start posting again.

(Shock horror, it’s me.)

Among other things, a certain pirate show has shoved me back into the depths of this cursed website and made me realize how much absolute rubbish we’ve settled for in the past.

I know we’d all rather forget it, but this site is infamous for its obsession with Supernatural, Sherlock, Merlin, and other media which has taunted us with the illusion of representation. We have scraped the bottom of each barrel for a grimy, warped mirror in which we can see ourselves reflected.

I realized halfway through Our Flag Means Death that I was treating it in the same way I had done with these shows. I settled for a relationship between secondary characters, hoping for more but accepting that history would repeat itself and we would once again find solace in the depths of a03.

So many queer stories in media are written about us, but not for us. Love, Simon was the most representation I had seen at the age of 13, sitting in a theatre on my first ever date with my first ever girlfriend. The group of us who rewatched it like it was our lifeblood had finally found media for people like us- young and queer. Watching this movie again recently made me realize how many things we had been willing to overlook in order to enjoy this base level representation.

Inaccuracies are to be expected in any high-school rom-com—Martin’s homecoming shenanigans and a musical with seemingly only one show are perfect examples of standard departures from reality. When the author, director, and marketing team claim to tell a real-life queer story, other elements begin to stray from ‘expected’ to disrespectful. The way in which Simon’s best friends have seemingly no understanding for his situation, facing bullying and ostracization from Martin’s blackmail, and never once apologize for their actions makes it seem as though this is completely acceptable. The fact that Simon’s outing is downplayed to such an extent that even in Georgia, he faces one act of blatant homophobia and seems to be accepted without question by almost the entire school.

“I'm just like you. I have a totally, perfectly normal life. Except I have one huge-ass secret.”

Because, you know, no one watching a movie about a closeted gay teenager could possibly be queer in any way. That would just be ridiculous. It’s especially off-putting when the lead character is played by a straight man.

Anyway, I know this rant is very Love Simon-centric, but it’s honestly just because I watched it recently and was so annoyed that it hasn’t left my head since.

In the realm of things which haven’t left my thoughts since I watched them, I’m going to go back to the much more enjoyable topic of Our Flag Means Death. (Hopefully without giving away any spoilers because everyone needs to watch this show with as little previous information as possible.)

The impact this show has had on my life is absolutely insane. (Shoutout to my friend Damien for not shutting up until I watched the whole series.) In the five hours it took to watch the show, I saw more of myself than I have in the last eighteen years.

Queerbaiting has been so prevalent that I was afraid to watch the next episode at points, having seen such a gorgeous scene between characters that the thought of nothing coming from that interaction was almost too much. I was so afraid of letting my hopes rise that I broke my sacred rule of never looking up spoilers just to find out if something implied by one character was true. (It was. Almost cried. Thanks, Vico.)

The most beautiful part of this show is that it was written for queer people, but not written about being queer. It is, first and foremost, a show about a rich man who longed for the sea and has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. It’s a story of pirates, revenge, how awful the British are, and above all, it’s about creating your own family.

The queer relationships aren’t overly sexualized or infantilized as they so often are. The characters find their own ways to each other in a natural progression of events, and the camera lets them love one another in so many simple ways.

Whether intentional or not, (though I have to assume that it was,) OFMD tapped into the very things which we had all dreamed about since the first episode of Supernatural aired back in 2005. David Jenkins provided us with a story written purely for queer people, not just about us. The queer experience is shown beautifully even by characters which aren’t explicitly stated as such. Found family and self-acceptance are woven into a tale of betrayal and idiocy, all resulting in a beautiful realization of what love can be in its purest form.

(Also, it’s absolutely hilarious and features billowy shirts, a seagull named Karl, and Taika Waititi in a leather crop top with an openly shown mobility aid. Oh, and a soundtrack of absolute bangers.)

If I felt as though I could go into more detail without spoiling the show for those who haven’t seen it, I absolutely would. In a sentence, all I can say is that The Chain by Fleetwood Mac will always conjure the image of two men learning to love after half a lifetime of suppression, in one way or another.

(If HBO Max doesn’t renew OFMD for a second season I will riot. I can’t handle that kind of emotional whiplash without some kind of conclusion.)