Horses are good company -- The Witcher

Red, White and Royal Blue, movie based on the Casey McQuiston novel.
This is on Amazon; I got the $1.99 for one week trial. I listened to the book some time ago but not closely. It's about the son of the American president falling in love with an English prince.

It's just so... nice? to see a gay romcom? That has high production values and a mainstream release! That has people of color and a transgender character and the word "queer", and inclusion of bisexuality, etc. I love that it had sex scenes. I love that Alex talked about being from an immigrant family. Stephen Fry has a wonderful cameo.

Like OK, maybe the story is silly, and the characterization isn't all that deep, but it doesn't need to be. If the straights can have light-hearted romcoms we should have them too!

This just cheered me immensely and I want a hundred more such films to make up for all the times I had to watch "Love, Actually" when I was a young adult.

I have a pet peeve, perhaps a strange one, because I used to work in infectious disease research.
Alex's mom is giving him some sex talk advice, and she says, "if you are bottoming then you should get the HPV vaccine."

Listen to me, you should get that vaccine regardless. REGARDLESS of your sexual position. HPV can cause throat cancer; the virus gets there through oral sex. And other cancers!! This vaccine should be universal IMO. I am an asexual-spectrum lesbian and I got this vaccine.

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/basic_info/cancers.htm

Yes ok maybe don't get your sex ed through movies, but... what else do we have, in this culture of ours.

Perhaps some day over drinks, or in a future journal entry, i will tell you the weird story of how demonstrating too much knowledge of HPV and gay sex got me into hot water at my lab job. Which was an infectious disease research lab!! But a homophobic workplace! my hands are not up for that much typing tonight.

My friend Things With Wings said that she is only watching shows that have a) no cops /no copaganda, and b) interesting, significant queer characters. I have been thinking about this a lot as a general base line of expectation for shows.

Not all of my shows quite meet this criteria, but many of them do, and I'm glad there is so much good TV to watch. It's really been a lifeline to me lately. Personally I am fine with making exceptions but I am finding it useful to use this framework as a way to think about and evaluate media, sort of like how the Bechdel test operates as a framework. I enjoy plenty of things that don't pass the Bechdel test but it's useful.

Shows I'd recommend that fit these criteria:
This Is Going to Hurt (British medical drama);
Lizzo's Watch out for the Big Grrls;
What We Do in the Shadows;
Everything's Gonna Be Okay;
Abbott Elementary;
The Umbrella Academy;
Black Sails;
Our Flag Means Death;
Rūrangi;
Feel Good (Mae Martin's show, Netflix);
Sex Education (Netlflix).

This is just recent TV shows; most queer movies pass.

What other shows fit?

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
(Aristotle and Dante #2)
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I got an Advanced Reviewer's copy of this from a friend. Release date is Oct 12.

In short: I loved it!!

There are some books that get you where you live. That make you feel less alone, that comfort you and expand your view of yourself. This is one of those books.

Being gay can be joyful and liberating, and sometimes it can be really heavy and painful, trying to live and love in a world that largely either ignores you or hates you. Ari navigates this reality with his boyfriend Dante, their supportive parents, and with some new friends. Ari and Dante go camping; the attend their senior year of high school. It's 1988; AIDS is killing people around them.

This is a quiet book, a beautiful book. Ari is a remarkable person, a deep thinker who struggles, and eventually succeeds, at truly connecting with other people. He struggles with seeing himself as worthy of love. With the help of his people, he grows into himself, into a sensitive and loving person.

We who are queer in this world, we need these kinds of hopeful stories.

Victor/Victoria - 1982; source: local library. Starring Julie Andrews.

Not sure how/why I waited so long to see this. At least quarantine has been allowing me to catch up on movies.

I am amazed and pleased at how super queer this movie is. The opening scene has two men waking up in bed together. One goes to dresser and takes money out of the other's wallet. The setting is 1939, Paris; many of the scenes take place in queer-friendly cabarets.

The story is a truly funny farce with lots of great one-liners, comebacks, and gags. The protagonists have a refreshing lack of homophobia. I'm just amazed that this was a mainstream movie in the early 80s, with big-name actors, and it won awards. There are no gay bashings, though there are some anti-gay slurs used.

My one complaint/content note is that in one scene, late in the film, someone intentionally smashes another person's finger, and it's played for laughs. There were a couple other somewhat uncomfortable moments, but overall, the tone is light and playful, one might even say Gay!

The Boys in the Band - 2020 - Netflix.

This is a remake of a 1968 play and movie about a group of gay men who gather to celebrate a birthday. The cast of this film is the same as the Broadway revival; it features actors who are openly gay and includes Zachary Quinto, Jim Parsons, and Matt Bomer.

I felt like I was missing some cultural context for this. To me it just seemed like these "friends" didn't actually like each other that much, and were being mean to each other for sport. I suffered through the last half of it, mostly to watch Zachary Quinto chew scenery while wearing a green velvet suit. I'm glad I saw it, though, for cultural reasons. I also watched the short documentary about the film, in which the playwright, Mart Crowley, was interviewed.

I was pleased to learn that two of the actors in the piece, who play a couple, became a couple IRL and are now together. That's some fan fic shit right there.

Luisa Now and Then, by Carole Maurel, adapted by Mariko Tamaki - graphic novel
(eta: Luisa, not Louisa)

This is so good!?!?! The art is stunningly beautiful: empathetic portraits of people, soft-colored images of Paris.

The story is one about coming out as an adult, and finding self-acceptance. It spoke to me personally.

When you do this difficult emotional work of coming out as an adult, you have to "go back" to your teenage and childhood self and address the feelings and pain that you did not process at the time. This process is made literal in "Luisa Now and Then," as adult-Luisa spends time with her 15 year old self. Luisa finds her teenage self annoying; she's not as kind to herself as she could be, and that's uncomfortable to witness. But, she is unhappy and processing a lot of negative emotions. She witnessed and experienced homophobia from her mother and her peers as a teen, and has since only dated men.

Recommended.

ParaNormal - claymation kids' movie.

I watched this because I read somewhere that is has a gay character; one of the side-kicks is revealed to be gay at the end of the movie. An argument could also be made that the main character, Norman, is sub-textually gay, he is called "sensitive" by his parents, for example.

The story was cute, but I did not like the visuals. This is firmly in the horror movie/zombie genre, and so reveled in body horror, which is not my thing. Even the living characters had grayish skin, and a certain grotesque quality to their bodies; I found it off-putting.

The one Black character was a highly stereotypical "sassy" woman.

People who are fans of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and similar films will probably like this better than I did.

A Secret Love - Netflix

This is a documentary about 2 older lesbians. I turned it off after 5 minutes, because it was giving time and voice to the homophobic relatives, which I found super irritating.

Douglas - comedy special by Hannah Gadsby - Netflix

Lovely and fun. She basically gives content notes at the beginning of the performance. Really enjoyed some of her use of language, like "pufferfish" meaning to react strongly and quickly to some minor annoyance.

Circus of Books - Netflix

A fascinating documentary that I'm still thinking about. The film maker, Rachel Mason interviews her parents, who are a straight Jewish couple who for decades ran a gay sex/porn shop in LA. They saw a business opportunity and took it, then just kind of kept running it out of momentum I guess? The husband/father (Barry) is a very easy-going, chill kind of guy. The wife/mother (Karen) is more complicated and difficult. Mason also talks to store employees, porn industry people, and her brothers.

One of her brothers is gay and the mom had a problem with it due to her conservative Jewish background. This was so odd? I mean i guess compartmentalization and all that, but it seemed like up until the brother came out to his parents, Karen seems to lack political awareness or an activist mindset. Some time afterwards, she and Barry joined PFLAG.

I wish Rachel Mason had pushed harder here, and raised the issue of appropriation. If you are profiting from the queer community, even modestly, don't you have a responsibility towards that community? Aren't there ethical issues with hiring and supervising people, with putting money into gay porn movies, with buying stock for your store, if you don't fully support what you are doing? This wasn't explored enough.

Still, I enjoyed this film, it was fun to watch.

Today's Shower Thoughts are about how tattoos and piercings might be a form of gender expression.

Although such things are very common in my community, I've resisted tattoos, piercings, even hair dye. I feel about them much the same way I do about makeup: looks good on other people, but don't want it anywhere near my skin.

As a friend pointed out else-net, we don't really know what gender *is*. It could be anything.

Still sick, but today is the first day with no measurable fever. I've been watching a lot of TV.

"What We do in the Shadows" (TV show) is newly up on Hulu. I adored this and watched it quickly. It is a mockumentary about several vampires living together in a house on Staten Island. The producers are Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. I liked this better than the movie, because there is a female vampire and there are canon bisexual vampires. Very silly, clever, and enjoyable. In one particular episode that I loved, Lazlo turns into his bat form only to get caught by animal control and put into a shelter, where his friends must rescue him.

Content notes: silly violence and blood, references to child harm (kids being turned into vampires), vomit, dead bodies, raunchy humor.

Ragnorak - Netflix (TV show from Norway).

I watched the first episode of this and really dug it, but then at the end, the lesbian character is murdered?!?!11! Probably will not continue with it.

22 July - Netflix.
"BOATS" (based on a true story) of the neo-Nazi terrorist attack in Norway. In English, but with many Norwegian actors, including one of the same main people from Ragnorak. This is engaging and sensitively told. It focuses on one teenage boy who is a survivor of the shootings, and also on the trial of the terrorist.

Netflix has two new shows that are so similar to each other that they seem to be in conversation, or part of a genre that I’m not sure how to name. Shrill and Special are reality-based, short form comedy shows centering on marginalized people. Their particular kind of comedy is one where situations can be awkward and somewhat cringe-y, and people make bad choices, but the characters have heart and are trying. Sometimes situations aren’t resolved to satisfaction; in this way they are unlike old-school sitcoms.

Both shows take place in LA and are about 20-somethings trying to navigate social relationships, jobs, and parents. In Shrill, Annie Easton (Aidy Bryant from SNL) is a fat woman who is struggling with her self-esteem. In Special, Ryan is a gay man with cerebral palsy (and is actually played by a gay man with CP, show creator Ryan O’Connell). Both characters have jobs at blogging websites that seem to be similar to XO Jane-- their assigned stories are confessional, personal posts. Both shows even feature pool parties where their characters struggle with being near-naked in public. Both have terrible bosses, although Ryan’s boss did grow on me a bit by the end of Special’s 8 episodes. Both characters have fat women of color as their best friends, and those characters are more likable and charismatic than anyone else around them. (This is possibly problematic: a fat woman of color as truth-teller or guide.)

Annie’s journey is one where she is learning to stand up to people and value herself. She starts writing blog posts about being fat. She stands up to her mom and her boss. She struggles with trying to break up with her no-account boyfriend, but keeps going back to him. I found the relationship with the boyfriend uncomfortable to watch. She seems to like him but it’s hard to understand why; but then, I’m a lot farther in my self-acceptance journey than Annie is, and I’m also largely not attracted to men.

Ryan is trying to get out in the world and have a life, after being in a co-dependent relationship with his mother. He gets a job and an apartment, and makes a friend at work, Kim. In the sweetest episode of the series, Kim encourages Ryan to hire a sex worker to help him get past his virginity. The sex worker is played by Brian Jordan Alvarez, an actor I know from a youtube series called “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo.” This scene was funny and sweet and normalized the idea of visiting a sex worker. My heart grew three sizes.

Some parts of “Special” were uncomfortable to watch, because they relied on people lying and keeping secrets and having conflict with each other. The series ends with a bit of an emotional cliffhanger between Ryan and his mom. Ryan starts this show with no friends, and just starting a job, and it’s not clear what he’s been doing all day. It seems like if he’s living an insular life, he should at least have online friends. But he isn’t connected to community and it’s not clear if he has any hobbies or interests. There are probably plenty of people living this way, but it’s a bit painful to think about.

It is just so ridiculously refreshing to watch shows about fat people, queer people, disabled people. This particular genre is perhaps not to my taste, but I will keep watching for the representation if nothing else. These people have sex and fight with their parents and, put simply, get to be the main characters.

Content note for Special: the end credits feature bright colors that rapidly change and bothered my light-sensitive eyes.

I’m trying to write every day despite having bad facial pain that affects everything, which in turn is probably due to poor breathing from the polar vortex cold weather. This means I’m doing most things pretty slowly, but I still want to do them.

When I was 28 I had a bizarre coming out experience. Some of you were there to read along with it, others I didn’t know yet. This experience defied description, but some words and some stories do come close, or have something in common with my experience and resonate with me. They have to do with compartmentalization, which Wikipedia defines as:

“a subconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person's having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves.”

For me, compartmentalization was a way to deal with having severe anxiety, and with perceiving that the world is not safe for queer people. I walled off part of myself, and could only fully access this part when my mind was ready.

Fanfic and book recs follow. Many of these I haven’t read in a long time, so I can’t provide content notes.

Numberless the Ways, and Imperceptible. LOTR, Legolas/Gimli, by Laura JV.
Text: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680141
Podfic by exmanhater: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14226666

One has the capacity to feel things, but at the same time not perceive them. Different levels or areas of your brain are not fully communicating. Things happen in their own time. Sometimes people on the outside like friends and family, can see what is happening more clearly than the person experiencing this phenomenon.

In the YA novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz, the character Ari comes from a family that doesn’t talk about things. There are important subjects that are taboo, and there are secrets. Ari compartmentalizes his feelings about his best friend Dante. Interestingly the author also came out later in his life. (audiobook is read by Lin-Manuel Miranda).

By Any Other Name, by entangled now, Teen Wolf, Derek/Stiles
https://archiveofourown.org/works/566258
Podfic by Rhea: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589131

Amnesia fic isn’t quite the same, but shares some resonances. Namely, that the characters start the story lacking full use of their memories, and by the end (in this trope), the characters have their minds and narratives re-integrated. The amnesia can serve as dis-inhibition, or gaining a new perspective on one’s self and one’s relationship. The mind can sort of step outside of its normal pathways.

In Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles temporarily loses his memory. When he regains all of his memories, he experiences a “cascade” when they come rushing back in. This was the closest term I had to my experience of having my thoughts race, replaying and reanalyzing memories with a new lens, as I felt my brain re-align itself.

Sell Your Body to the Night, by dira sudis, Teen Wolf, Derek/Stiles
Text: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2838161
Podfic by thilia: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5145440

In this epic work, Stiles experiences a trauma and runs away to San Francisco to become a sex worker. He puts the knowledge of his trauma away and very carefully does not allow himself to think about it. He acts in ways that may seem dangerous to others, but which feel safe to him. He maintains a strict sort of control over his life, in order to protect himself from too-powerful feelings.

Compartmentalization seems to me to be a normal coping strategy in response to anxiety, to trauma, or to living in a dangerous world.

I am interested in reading more stories like these if you know of them. Podfic and audio books are especially preferred but not necessary.