Today in, I should probably find something to talk about, there’s an actress who was totally around before Twilight. She’s been in other things, guys, don’t worry about Twilight.
Do I sound defensive? My friends don’t like Kristen Stewart, so maybe I’m a little defensive. Not sure I need to make this part clear, but when I say my friends, I mean my straight friends.
While I definitely wouldn’t rule out that I’d talk about Kirsten Stewart for no reason, I have a reason.
Kristen Stewart really wants to play a gay superhero, which is a strange coincidence because I really want her to play a gay superhero. We have so much in common! Kristen Stewart is my new bestie.
I have friends that hate her and I always defend her, though sometimes my argument is “gay” as in, she’s gay. So. That’s in her favor. My friends never seem to accept that as enough.
Why do I feel the need to always write out Kristen Stewart instead of just using her first or last name? No idea. Kristen Stewart,
Everything has remakes these days and I’m not one to lament that and wonder why nobody comes up with anything new anymore, but it is a little bizarre that more and more remakes have remakes. I’m not sure how well this translates to me saying I’m excited about the new Charlie’s Angels thing, but I am excited about the new Charlie’s Angels thing.
Finally, Stewart (Kristen) talked about how she wanted to play a gay superhero and how people told her, hey, you should be less gay if you wanna be in a superhero movie at an interview with Anthony Mackie. People are jerks. But not Anthony Mackie.
This isn’t related to anything, but I’ve seen one Marvel movie, Iron Man. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything Anthony Mackie is in, but I like him. The Falcon was the first mainstream African American comic book hero, and I’m still not exactly sure how, but I also thought his character was the first gay black superhero. And, uh, apparently he’s not?
I have almost no interaction with the huge Marvel cinematic world or the fandom, so I was able to think this for years. Sometimes I’m still like, that guy is gay and then I remember, oh right, that’s not true.
Also, I maybe saw some or all of the Twilight movies. I can’t actually remember. I maybe liked them. In my defense, I was drunk, which is maybe why I can’t remember which ones I’ve seen.
There’s a part in One Little Liewhere there’s a Very Gay Double Date, and I had fun writing it, which is probably why there’s so much of it. Here’s a deleted scene.
Things to know: Ryan and Luke are dating. So are Lydia and Alicia. They’re in the car, heading to a gay club.
~
Ryan
Lydia and I had our differences, but I’d never loved her more. Her bad attitude and attempt to ruin our night meant that I wasn’t the one doing anything stupid. I was actually kinda relaxed. It was hard not to be. I got to sit in the front because my boyfriend was driving. That was one of those little, totally insignificant things I never thought I’d get to do in high school; the kind of thing I wanted because I didn’t think I could have. Gotta say, it wasn’t bad.
The scenery outside was miles of boring, flat farmland, so I looked at Luke instead. Orange light spilled in the car then faded and the shadows played across his face. He occasionally took my hand and held it while he drove. Totally unsafe but I couldn’t protest. I was too busy being happy and soaking up this moment in case the first double date nerves came back.
“Um, Ryan,” came Alicia’s voice from the backseat, “Did you want any of our beverages? Because now is the time as, uh, we’ve almost drank them all.” ‘We’ was more like Lydia but I didn’t call her on it and declined a drink.
I got high on life. Which sounded lame, but I just didn’t drink very often. I had poor reflexes and an inability to keep my thoughts to myself at the best of times, so I didn’t need help from alcohol to make a fool of myself.
“It’s okay, you can drink,” Luke told me.
I eyed him. “You’re just saying that so you can take advantage of me,” I accused. Though if that was the case, why was I objecting? He could totally get me drunk and take advantage of me.
He rolled his eyes. “I mean it; you’re a fun drunk.” Maybe I was warming up to alcohol.
I turned around to look at the girls and perhaps ask for some of the alcohol, but Lydia had her head tipped back as she drained the rest of the liquid. The long, pale line of her neck didn’t do anything for me, but it distracted Alicia enough that she didn’t notice my gaze. Huh. How did that work? She liked the way Lydia looked but didn’t want to do anything about it?
Well, probably. You didn’t have to want to hump something to appreciate its aesthetic value, otherwise museums and art galleries would be really weird.
I turned back to Luke. “No, if you’re not drinking I won’t either. Solidarity boo.”
Luke’s hand went from the wheel to land on my thigh, squeezing once and then pulling away. That moment was way better than booze.
Alicia is a character from the One More Thing series. She’s dating Lydia. She likes drama. Wait, I need to be more specific. The kind you do in school. Wait, I need to be more specific. She’s into theater.
Because her POVs in One Little Change didn’t need to be a million years long, I had to cut her thoughts down. Here’s some cut and uncut parts from her story.
The music in Spring Awakening was pretty awesome. The play itself wasn’t my favorite. There were a million gross undertones that were part of the times or something, but no one cared because it was the taboo play about sex. Everyone in drama with me was constantly begging for it to be our next show because it was so edgy. However, if that was the play every high school drama department wanted to put on, that made it normal and not really edgy at all.
Grease was on the tame, acceptable side of high school theater productions and Spring Awakening was on the other end. Wasn’t there something in the middle we could explore instead of doing Grease another freaking time? I’d been Sandy, I’d been Rizzo, I’d been Frenchy, and I’d even been Kenickie once. At least playing a T-Bird had been different than playing a Pink Lady.
No grade school, middle school, or high school production would let me play Danny Zucko. Being Kenickie when Evan Sanders got sick and I was doing crew was one thing, but actively promoting crossdressing and having two girls play the main love interests? That pushed this innocent musical over to the Spring Awakening side of things but in a way I was actually interested in. The administration, however, was decidedly not interested.
Theater was my happy place. My safe place. Lydia was sort of becoming like that too. I felt like I belonged with her one minute but then things got scary the next but a good kind of scary, that made my heart beat faster, that made me want to burst into love songs. Only then there was this. This was scary but not in a good way.
We were sitting on the dock of the lake, sun shining down brightly, though strategically placed trees were currently giving us shelter from the harshest rays. I wasn’t attending summer camp this year, but I was a counselor at one outside of town instead. Well, Ryan liked to complain there was no lake in Lake Forest. Or forest, but we had both on these grounds. Technically, he was right. We were outside the city limits. Fine, I was a counselor at a camp outside of town.
The whole place wasn’t about theater or the arts or anything, though me and a few other teens with experience were the ones running the drama units. Being outside in the bright sunshine wasn’t usually my thing. However, with my shorts and a light blue shirt, with the smell of fresh air everywhere, it was kinda nice out here.
We just ended a session with one group of kids and another would come in next week. There was a barbecue tonight to celebrate, with counselors and significant others. Or siblings. Lydia and I weren’t siblings obviously, we didn’t even look alike. My boss was firmly convinced we were even though no one had tried to convince him. Some people were like that.
Other people decided that girlfriend meant friend who was a girl. Holding hands, kissing, hell even getting married and having rugrats one day? Wow, what an interesting choice to do that with your friend who is also a girl.
Ryan Miller and Luke Chambers do everything they do in the most terrible and awkward ways, including, well, you know… it.
Doing it.
IT!
You understand. That’s enough.
SEX! Sex was the it in that case. In case you weren’t aware.
One Little Changefeatures Ryan and Luke navigating intimacy and a long distance relationship. Here are some outtakes involving Ryan’s feelings about all of this.
—
Ryan
First experiences were always weird. Right? Right. I think so. Especially if I was involved. Things would only get better! I had to remember that. Just, it was difficult. Since this was the last memory before I left.
I didn’t want to worry but freaking out and jumping to conclusions was my natural state. I had so much experience with it and much less with being calm and not panicking. This was why we had a plan. It might suck but we could get through it. Who knew that would apply to our first time?
No, don’t think about that. Just, the plan was for me leaving. Oh god. I was already leaving but at least I had been leaving on a high note. Except now. I was leaving on a not high note. An awkward note. It might suck but we can get through it. We can handle it. I hoped that was still true.
…
I was the rightest person to ever right and everyone should always listen to me because I could do no wrong, but my powers were too great. The common folk feared my gifts and never heeded my advice. Too bad. Cause see, I told Luke we should freak out first. So we could get it out of the way. Granted, that was about me leaving, not about—
We definitely should have freaked out beforehand. Because I was so going to freak out now.
Guess who has a book available for pre-order? This is a really easy game. Yes, the answer is me. Well, probably lots of people but also me.
Can Ryan and Luke’s relationship survive a little distance?
Yes. Totally. Shut up. These are all answers Ryan Miller might give you in response to that question. A summer apart will only bring him and Luke Chambers closer together in the end. However, Ryan might actually be a bit glad to be away from his gorgeous baseball player boyfriend for a while.
Why?
Well, Ryan and Luke are navigating the next big step in their relationship, and maybe it’s not going great. Yeah. They’re taking things to the next level, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. They’re handling it with all the grace and dignity one would expect of them. Which is to say, none at all.
The distance between them is only supposed to be geographical. However, dealing with their changing relationship might just pull them apart even further. Will getting closer actually bring the couple closer or tear them apart?
As you might have heard, like in this very post, you can pre-order a copy of One Little Change now! And the release date is really soon, the 21st, because I totally didn’t forget to post about this sooner. I am such a professional.
One Day at a Time was cancelled by Netflix a million years ago and I wanted to make a post about it in a timely manner… and then I didn’t. Crazy story, right? It’s all true. I wanted to write a post celebrating the cancelled but marvelous show and talking about how awesome it is, but when I started to do that I realized that I hadn’t even gotten to praising the show yet because I was mostly just pissy about it being cancelled. Basically? It was great and now I’m mad and sad.
Here’s some thoughts about ODAAT, Latnx representation, and queer characters on Latinx shows. And technically, this is still relevant because there is a chance that ODAAT may find a new home. Which yeah, that would be neat. (That’s me playing it cool. I really, really, REALLY want that to happen.)
Rita Moreno is Awesome
From twitter, no idea what’s happening here, but I liked the pic.
For those who don’t know, One Day at a Time is a Netflix show about a Cuban-American family that has Rita Moreno and is hilarious.
It’s so wonderful. A sitcom that’s not forced and terrible and that’s actually funny! And it’s about a Cuban family! And if that weren’t good enough, queer characters. And if that weren’t good enough, there’s whole storylines dealing with mental illness and working to de-stigmatize needing help for these problems. And if that weren’t enough, Rita Moreno! And if it that weren’t enough, it even got three seasons.
Sometimes the show is cheesy, sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s silly. Rita Moreno is an occasionally clueless old Cuban lady who rants about things the elderly fear and what is with kids these days, and then she gets worked into a frenzy about having Cuban pride, and then she loves on her grandson and basically I would believe they put stuff in the script like, ‘and here we’ll just let Rita be cute/funny/crazy and it will be awesome’ and it is.
The Stupidest, Greatest Joke Ever
True story, one time I watched this show called Black Sails because I thought it was about wlw mermaids, it was not, but it was really great anyway. I got interested because of the queer women and yet a straight white guy ended up being one of my faves. So, uh, yay Latinx people, but as I’m thinking of my favorite parts, both of them involve the token white guy. Oops.
This is really dumb, yet it’s by far my favorite thing to happen in the show. Yo enitendo means I understand. I don’t know if you need to know that to enjoy the joke, probably not, but there’s your impromptu Spanish lesson for the day.
My other favorite is anytime Schneider tries to do the sign of the cross.
More Hispanic People on TV, Please
Rosa and Jake from B99, one is bi and Latina and the other could be at least one of those things! Image from Pinterest
When I was a kid, I remember hearing that the Mexicans were going to take over America. Being Mexican American, that sounded just fine with me. But when it comes to media portrayals of Latinx characters… If we’re supposed to take over, where are we? How come we never appear on TV?
Let me tell you something about our representation on TV. It sucks. Latinx people continue to be so poorly represented even though as a whole things slowly seem to be shifting in the right direction with more diverse casts. There’s a few shows like Brooklyn 99 and Superstore, so I’m mentioning them because they rock.
The Only Good Sitcom About Latinx People in the History of the World
That’s barely an exaggeration, at least when it comes to U.S. shows in English.
In the past undetermined amount of time I’ve been alive, I have watched at least one episode of about every sitcom focusing on a Latinx family. Seriously, even completely terrible ones no one remembers anymore like the Rob Reiner one or George Lopez one after the longer running but terrible first show he had. I’ve been doing this at least since I was a teenager and I usually watch with my mom. We do this for two reasons: one, we want the show to succeed whether we end up liking it or not because yay, Latinx characters and two, because maybe the show will actually be good.
They almost never are. There’s just so few of them already and there’s rarely anything that makes us want to keep watching. Occasionally, something has potential like Cristela and Telenovela, which was rough but I still loved, then it gets cancelled immediately.
Remakes, the Show You Loved Now with More Hispanics!
The power of tres. Yes, I just wanted to say that. Image from the CW.
Not sure if this is good or not, but it seems like the thing to do these days is take a popular show that’s ended and redo it with a Latinx cast. Hopefully, there’s people who want to see it because they liked the first one, but then again there’s also people who liked the first one and hate that another is being made. There’s One Day at a Time, Charmed, Mayans.
So if you see the show you really loved when it was on is now being recreated with Mexicans, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans or something, please don’t immediately hate on it. Yes, I know, another remake, but we don’t get a ton of original content with Latinx casts, so please let us have this.
Hella Gay YA
Elena Alvarez. Pic from Twitter
Hey, that’s me! Or my blog. I figure that, when having a blog, blogging is, you know, better than not blogging. So not everything is always related to my books or gay YA lit, but there is a correlation here!
The show has a queer young adult character in a leading role, Elena. If you are well-meaning and awkward, she’s super relatable. She likes social justice and feminism and ladies and not wearing dresses.
Also, I think this is a callback to the original show or something, I don’t know and it doesn’t really make a difference to me, I just love how excited she is to be a handy (wo)man.
I’m working on editing One Little Problemand planning for the fourth book, One Little Change. How’s that going? Uh… I’m the one asking the questions here! Only I’m not asking any questions. Except for the one I just asked.
Yeah, today has been tough. Productivity and I are just not getting along today, which is totally its fault and not mine. Productivity knows what it did. Hope your day is going better!
I did manage to get one thing done today. Here’s a quote and excerpt from One Little Problem, out now! Ryan and Luke look at the stars a lot, it’s their thing, along with hand holding.
* * *
Ryan POV
“The one relevant thought I did have,” Luke said, “Aside from why planetariums even exist because we already have outside at night, so isn’t the whole world a giant planetarium already—”
“Oh my god,” I laughed.
“Aside from that,” he said pointedly, moving to take his arm away from me, but I didn’t let him. “I was thinking that even though looking at the stars is romantic, the stars themselves aren’t that romantic.”
“Because they’re giant balls of fire and gas that would instantly immolate us?” So sexy!
“No, just all the myths and stuff associated with them.” We fell silent a moment to hear the recorded voice played over the speakers narrating facts about the stars. The myth about the bear constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, was that Zeus turned his side piece into a bear, so his wife wouldn’t rage quit him or the world or something and then the lady’s son killed the bear not knowing it was his mom. Yeah, that wasn’t very romantic. Both the story and the serial cheating.
“They’re mostly about lost souls and tragedies,” Luke continued. Now the voice-over talked about Andromeda, who was sacrificed to a sea monster. “And some of it was violent, like the scorpion killing Orion.” Oh, Luke knowing things was so sexy. “I started regretting bringing you here because if you were still mad at me, then this place was giving you all kinds of ideas for revenge.” He shuddered. “I did not want to have to deal with scorpions.”
Here is a little snippet from One More Problem, available for pre-order now. It will be released on June 16.
Ryan was under me and I had his hands pinned above his head, trying to wrangle him into submission, but he would not be swayed. He pouted his half insane/half ridic pout. “One more time. Please?” He relaxed into my hold a bit, as if trying to convince me he was docile and innocent. Yeah right.
But I gave in anyway. “Fine,” I sighed, my breath releasing on an exhale against the skin below his ear. “You were right.”
“Oh my god, you should always be whispering those words in my ear.”
Well, that was nice to hear, so I did it again. “You were right,” I whispered and paused to nip at his ear and then he made a noise that was also really nice to hear, so I did it again and then said, “This worked.”
“Yay.” He looked smug and happy, like a cat lying in the sun. Now that he was getting his way, he did stop fighting me, actually relaxing and letting himself be praised and kissed. I should probably do something about this soon. His smugness would know no bounds, growing and growing until he thought he got to make all our relationship decisions, until it threatened the planet… Eh, I’d worry about it later.
Now would be the worst time to start something new. I didn’t have any spare moments. And yet, I wanted to anyway. I didn’t even have the free time required to start obsessing about whether this was the best time to get into a new relationship or not. I would have gladly spent more time worrying about this but.
I wanted to get to know him. Something told me he would be worth it.
I’m not sure I have this blogging thing down yet, but they say to write what you know, right? Don’t ask me who they are, but I know pop culture and enjoy the gayer side of things, so. I’m starting a list of my favorite gay characters, mainly based on what I’m watching/reading at the time.
Because I was bingeing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend when I decided to do this, I’m starting with Darryl Whitefeather.
.
Darryl Whitefeather is 1/8 Native American and his overemphasis of this minor part of his heritage would probably be annoying if he wasn’t adorably earnest about everything. His care factor is always at an 11, which I can relate to, and he’s an unabashed giant softie who loves his female friends, tries way too hard, and gets very invested in everything he does.
Darryl’s storylines involve his divorce and his daughter Madison, owning and later co-owning the law firm where most of the characters work, and discovering his bisexuality later in his life. I can safely say he’s my favorite bothsexual because no one uses that term but him.
His main love interest in the show is White Josh (because there’s already a regular Josh who is Filipino) I love WhiJo because his name is White Josh, he’s snarky, and he balances out Darryl’s love for everything with his contempt for most things.
This is the best thing in the world:
Darryl explores coming out on the show and I’m really just talking about this so I can talk about how much I love cxgf for their normalization of gay relationships. We got a coming out story from Darryl and another character, a female, starts dating a woman with literally no fanfare. Its possible we skipped her own realizations with a time jump or its possible she was queer all along. (Also cxgf has spoiled me terribly because my two faves are both queer.)
P.S. For a brief occasion, Darryl is played by a broom on a stand.
Also, I think this is a callback to the original show or something, I don’t know and it doesn’t really make a difference to me, I just love how excited she is to be a handy (wo)man.
Gay Paranormal Romance 