Summer’s much easier with Woofertone Fur-Coat Sun Lotion™, keeping rays out of your fur so you can relax in the sun or at the beach without burning up.
I was listening to an interview with Jay of Joyfully Jay (”M/M reviews and more”) on the podcast Smart Bitches Trashy Reads and she mentioned a wonderful alternative to the phrase “gay for you” which is popular in m/m romance circles to describe a situation where a straight man falls for another man. I find this phrase offensive since it implies that one might just become gay, and ignores the possibility of bisexuality and that there are shades of gray in terms of sexual orientation. Jay instead proposed “Out for You” which I really like. The “straight” guy may have had feelings toward men in the past but this person makes him willing to out himself (at least to himself) to act on it.
When I was a kid around 10 years old, I had a brace on my leg a-la Forrest Gump… I wore it for about two years to correct a hip disorder called Perthes disease. I spent those two years either hobbling around in a prototype brace (which I was lucky to be in the test group for), on crutches, or in a wheelchair. I wasn’t able to play much outdoors, not able to run around and be a kid, and not able to walk faster than an uncomfortable waddle. I was really lucky, but honestly – from a kid’s perspective? it sucked. A lot.
During this time, there were a handful of kids – not a lot, but five or six out of the thirty or so in my class – who were actually shitty to me about my situation. Seriously – they actually teased and bullied the kid in the leg brace like the antagonists in a bad 80′s coming-of-age movie. They were mad because I “got to be” pushed around in a wheelchair all the time. They were pissed that I got “preferred” seating near the restroom so I could manage more effectively. They were frustrated because I got attention that they perceived as something they deserved. They viewed the elements of my medical care as a “privilege” that they were being denied. They were actually jealous that I was stuck in a goddamned leg brace.
The point of all this back story is this: every time I see people moaning and whining about the lack of “straight pride”, this is the part of my life that provided my understanding of why. These kids were so jealous and shitty and selfish that they could completely overlook the discomfort and struggle (and outright misery, at times) of my situation because they wanted the attention I was getting. They took their health and their freedom completely for granted because they valued attention and privilege above all else, and had a complete inability to look any deeper at the consequences of the situation. If the attention wasn’t on them for one second, they did whatever it took to get it back.
I suspect that these kids grew up to become the jealous douchenozzles who write the posts bemoaning the lack of “straight pride” celebrations that show up everywhere around this time every year.
I understand that when scrolling through Tumblr it’s easy to glance at a wall of text and skip past. This post was important enough and sparked enough conversation on Twitter that I wanted to emphasize it again.
Imagine that you and your significant other are out for dinner. You want to lean together closely and talk. Hold hands across the table. Maybe exchange a tender kiss.
Now imagine that you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Before you lean together you glance at the table next to you – are they staring? You go to hold hands but make sure the waiter doesn’t give you a sneer. You kiss them and worry that someone may be waiting for you outside to jump you.
This sounds extreme, but this is everyday life for GLBTQA people around the world, even in the US, and even here in Illinois. This is life in fear, and it’s horrible. Things like the tragedy in Orlando bring these fears home, and every GLBTQA person thinks, “That could have been me.”
We need all the allies we can get. We need safe spaces. We need the love of our families and friends. And we need to change this, because living in fear is no way to live.
Earlier today, a friend remarked: “I don’t understand. The way you are reacting, it’s almost like you knew someone in the club.”
Here’s the thing you need to understand about every LGBT person in your family, your work, and your circle of friends:
We’ve spent most of our lives being aware that we are at risk.
When you hear interviewers talking to LGBT folks and they say “It could have been here. It could have been me,” they aren’t exaggerating. I don’t care how long you’ve been out, how far down your road to self acceptance and love you’ve traveled, we are always aware that we are at some level of risk.
I’m about as “don’t give a shit what ANYONE thinks” as anyone you’ll ever meet… and when I reach to hold Matt’s hand in the car? I still do the mental calculation of “ok, that car is just slightly behind us so they can’t see, but that truck to my left can see right inside the car”. If I kiss Matt in public, like he leaned in for on the bike trail the other day, I’m never fully in the moment. I’m always parsing who is around us and paying attention to us. There’s a tension that comes with that… a literal tensing of the muscles as you brace for potential danger. For a lot of us, it’s become such an automatic reaction that we don’t even think about it directly any more. We just do it.
And then… over the last few years, it started to fade a little. It started to feel like maybe things were getting better. A string of Supreme Court decisions. Public opinion shifting to the side of LGBT rights. Life was getting better. You could breathe a little bit.
What happened with this event is dramatically demonstrated by how Matt and I are reacting to it. Matt came out fairly late, during the golden glow of the changing tide. He’s never dealt with something like this. It’s literally turned him inside out emotionally because all that stuff he read about that was just “then” became very much “NOW”. For me, I’ve had some time to adjust to the idea that people hate us enough to kill us. Matthew Shephard was my first real lesson in that. So this weekend was a sudden slap in the face, a reminder that I should never have let my guard down, should never have gotten complacent… because it could have been US.
Every LGBT person you know knows what I’m talking about. Those tiny little mental calculations we do over the course of our life add up… and we just got hit with a stark reminder that those simmering concerns, those fears… they probably won’t ever go away. We’ll never be free of them. Additionally, now we just got a lesson that expressing our love could result in the deaths of *others* completely unrelated to us. It’s easy to take risks when it’s just you and you’ve made that choice. Now there’s this subtext that you could set off someone who kills other people who weren’t even involved. And that’s just a lot.
That’s why I’m personally a bit off balance even though (or because, depending on how you look at it) I live in Texas and was not personally effected by this tragedy. Don’t get me wrong: nothing will change. I will still hold my husband’s hand in public. I will still kiss him in public. We’ll still go out and attend functions and hold our heads high.
But we will be doing those mental calculations for the rest of our lives. Those little PDAs you take for granted with your spouse. They come with huge baggage for us. Every single one is an act of defiance, with all that entails.
So do me a favor. Reach out to that LGBT person in your life. Friend, co-worker, or family. Just let them know you are thinking of them and you love them. That will mean the world to them right now. I promise you.
“My wife’s the reason anything gets done
She nudges me towards promise by degrees
She is a perfect symphony of one
Our son is her most beautiful reprise
We chase the melodies that seem to find us
Until they’re finished songs and start to play
When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day.
This show is proof that history remembers
We lived through times when
hate and fear seemed stronger
We rise and fall and light from dying embers
remembrances that hope and love last longer
And love is love is love is love is love is love
is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.
I sing Vanessa’s symphony , Eliza tells her story
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”
(I’m sure nobody really cares about this stuff, but it’s bouncing around in my brain and I like to put it into words somewhere.)
I’m usually a pretty upbeat guy and I love a good happy story. Yet looking back at the last dozen books I’ve read, it’s what other readers call “angst-y” books that I enjoyed the most. I’m not quite sure what to make of this. I guess it’s more interesting for me to read of characters overcoming obstacles to get what they want?
Speaking of angst, there is a surprising trend in many books where at least one of the main characters is damaged (for want of a better word) in some way. Thinking of past books, we have war injuries, car accident injuries, suffering from aphasia, suffering from acute ADHD, inconvenient lycanthropy (!), and the ever-popular emotionally-scarred-from-previous-relationships. There’s probably some interesting sociological and psychological observations to be drawn from this (power balances in relationships, masculine and feminine roles, caregiver/patient roles, etc.). I’m an engineer not a sociologist or psychologist, though. I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the fact that the target demographic for these books is straight women, and the character of the relationships are being squeezed to fit what is considered current heterosexual norms.
I am amused that every blurb for every M/M romance can be summarized with “X is a guy who <problem>. Y is a guy who <role tangential to problem>. Can X and Y <resolve problem>?”
I have come to the conclusion that the only thing worse that M/M romance covers is M/M romance titles. Wow, there’s some tortured puns in some of those.
Results after four months on a medically-supervised weight loss program (Centegra Hospital System’s Optifast program). I posted more info about the program at http://ift.tt/1UDCyUT
We’re off the Optifast-assisted meals now and on our own. The trick is maintaining a healthy diet and continuing to exercise. The rapid weight loss has ended (alas!) and now the focus is on something more gradual – 1 to 2 lbs per week. Ideally, 200 lbs would be amazing but 225 would make me pretty happy too!
I was thrilled to pieces when I saw this scene. Disney could have written Gideon off like some bully character who never really amounted to anything, or got what was coming to him like a lot of those characters do in their movies. Gideon made something of himself. He’s a pastry chef, something that’s not traditionally a job for men in media. And as soon as Judy speaks to him, he immediately apologizes to her. He doesn’t try to shrug it off as no big deal, or say that it was just boys being boys or whatever; he knows he hurt her, and he owns up to it. And Judy immediately forgives him.
Well done, Disney.
Also the language that he used is not something that he would have most likely grown up hearing/using. Describing his failings as self-doubt that manifested into “unchecked rage and aggression” sounds SO MUCH like therapy speak. So he’s either gotten counseling to help him with some of his problems, or sought out literature to help himself. A++ disney 🙂
MINNEAPOLIS—Though they had reportedly anticipated his psychological breakdown for the past several months, friends and family members of local man Lucas Whitford acknowledged Wednesday that the mental collapse the 32-year-old billing specialist was currently suffering looked entirely different than what they had expected. “I personally thought he’d be more or less normal, and then one day, when something pushed him over the edge, he’d just snap and have some sort of screaming meltdown in public or something, but it hasn’t been like that at all,” said Whitford’s older brother Samuel, 35, later adding that until recently, he had pictured his high-strung sibling responding to his mounting mental strain by quickly becoming enraged, yelling some paranoid nonsense, and perhaps even needing to be physically restrained, instead of gradually and silently retreating from all interactions with others as he has done over the past two weeks.
If the past year and a half has had a theme for me, it has been understanding mental health and what maintaining good mental health requires. Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that I have always been a worrier, constantly fretting about bad possibilities and such. When confronted I was always laughed it off with, “I’m a worrier; it’s what I do. It’s my hobby.”
Somewhere along the line I realized that maybe that’s not quite normal. Maybe being in a state of frequent anxiety, lying awake at night worrying about things I can’t change, wasn’t always necessary. It took me a long time to figure this out – years, actually. And it was a big step when I finally talked to my doctor about this a little over a year ago and started on a path to setting myself to rights. I can honestly say it was the right decision, and my life has improved immeasurably since. I admit that sometimes feel guilty concerning myself with self-care, but I need to remind myself that sometimes you need to bail out your own boat before you can sail to assist others.
I have given a lot of thought to stress and anxiety: what causes it, how to avoid it. I am fortunate that my current job, while occasionally stressful, is usually pretty easygoing. Travel is always stressful to me, so after consideration I realized that the smartest thing to do is to do what it takes to lower that stress – TSA Precheck, buying upgrades to premium economy (or first class, if the pricing is right), allowing plenty of time at the airports. This has made it a much more pleasant experience and business travel is much less likely to leave me a total wreck.
Similarly, I’ve given a lot of thought to social interactions. Over the past decade+, the organizational bug has led me to want to plan Big Events – big parties, restaurant outings, that sort of thing. I came to realize that while the sense of accomplishment was great, at the end of things I frequently wasn’t happy. I didn’t get to spend as much time with friends as I would have liked, I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and sometimes I was just glad that it was over with. I finally recognized that I was creating stress for myself for no good reason.
From a social standpoint, we shifted to smaller gatherings at our house for dinner. While still a fun organizational challenge, it also allowed for greater interaction with friends and was a more enjoyable experience all around. The downside of this is that we can’t invite all of our friends to every gathering, which invariably means that someone will hear of something going on that they are not invited to. I feel quite guilty about this, because I hate the idea of anyone feeling excluded. The reality is, though, that this is necessary to help keep me balanced. To all of our friends, I can only ask for patience and your understanding. If all goes well, now that we are off the strict dietary program, I hope to make small dinner parties a more frequent occasion at our house and invite a constantly-changing group of friends each time. (And yes, part of this this is a very long-winded apology in advance lest anyone ever feel left out.)
At conventions, while throwing huge parties has been a thing for us, I have to admit that I’d be OK letting that fall by the wayside as well. Smaller, more laid-back gatherings are more likely to occur. Something that will not change (overall) is Wuffmeet, our annual party. That is our one big fun event and I love helping to organize it. The one thing that must change, though, is finally committing to what we have said that we needed to do for a long time: offloading some of the responsibilities of the event to friends who have said they are willing to help. What this looks like is still to be determined, but it is something that needs to happen.
In all of this you have probably noticed I’m talking about “me” and “I”. What about my husband? Dan has been incredibly supportive through all of this, putting up with my ups and downs, and always helping to keep me grounded. While not a complete introvert, he has introvert tendencies, and I have come to understand that better. We have agreed that keeping our social event planning more limited is something that works well for both of us, and that there are times when it just needs to be us alone doing something together and that’s OK. I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am and how lucky I feel to have wonderful man like him by my side.
So this is where I am right now. I am in a constantly-evolving state, learning what works and what doesn’t, and making changes to my life as necessary. It’s not easy, but I believe in the end I will be happier and more at peace, and those dear to me will be happier as well.
I edited the original post to include this, but I there was one more thing about M/M romances that I have noticed that I find rather bemusing:
Apparently in M/M romances, there are no tops and there are no bottoms.
Everyone is a switch. Cute in concept, not particularly likely from my
experience. There’s probably some interesting psychology behind this –
authors introducing a notion of equality between partners, perhaps,
although that gets into the problematic question of whether either role
is a sign of dominance or submission. Or maybe they just like to see
everyone having fun in as many ways as possible!
I realized yesterday that I bought my first M/M romance book on June 7, 2015. They’ve all been through Amazon Kindle (read using the Kindle app on my iPad or laptop), which is good and bad – good for easy accessibility, bad for impulse buying! While musing about this over the last few days I made some observations:
Everyone in this genre is fit, muscle-bound, and well-endowed. As someone in the rather average-to-chubby side of the spectrum this was a little off-putting until I realized that as a gay man, I am not the target demographic for these books. The majority of the market is women writing for women, and as much as women are subjected to ridiculous beauty standards by men I suppose turnabout is fair play, particularly when it comes to fantasizing. And that’s OK – the beauty of reading is I build whatever image of the characters I like in my mind as I read. That said, it would be nice to find something well-written with guys who are average or maybe even a little bearish (which apparently exists!).
M/M romance novel covers range from OK to hilariously bad. To whit:
I’ll assume this is due to self-published works or working with a small publisher of limited means. Since I’m buying ebooks it doesn’t really matter much to me, though I’ve learned to avoid looking at the cover before I read a book’s synopsis.
Dreamspinner Press is one of the biggest publishers of M/M Romance out there. They have a lot of good stuff…and a lot of dreck.
Goodreads is invaluable for exploring a new genre of fiction, but you can’t take the numerical ratings at face value. I find I need to read the reviews to see what the average reviewer is reading for – it’s often not what I’m looking for in a book. Even so, I’ve been trying to limit my explorations to books/authors whose average reviews run better than 4.0 (out of 5). The pickings are starting to get a little slim. This leads me to…
The more narrow the genre, the fewer the possible titles, and the even fewer possible titles worth reading. M/M romance, no problem. M/M Romance/Paranormal, ok but fewer. M/M Romance/Paranormal/Werewolves, you start to really narrow your choices. There are still some gems to be found, though.
The fans of each genre on Goodreads have their own jargon and acronyms. For M/M Romance you have things like MC (main character), HEA (happily ever after), Gay For You (GFY). The latter notion (“I’m straight, but I’ll go gay for you”) annoys me slightly because I believe the correct term would be “bisexual” but there’s no point in getting my hackles up over it.
I’ve found things that I adore in a book: a drawn-out courtship, good writing, a coherent plot, and likeable characters. I also like well-constructed conflict, though not to the point where everything bad in the world happens to the main characters. Many reviewers dismissively call this “angst” but I think it is an essential storytelling element.
Conversely, I’m not a fan of instant-meet-fall-in-love-and-directly-into-bed, more sex than plot, or ridiculous plot developments that only exist for an obvious non-plot related purpose (i.e. introducing a character for the next book in the series).
Many books follow a very obvious structure: Introduce characters. Introduce conflict between characters. Resolve conflict between characters. Introduce conflict between characters and outside parties/forces. Resolve conflict between characters and outside parties/forces. Happily ever after. Now, this is certainly not unique to this genre by any means, but this is the first time I’ve seen such blatant examples of plotting by numbers. Good books can follow this slavishly as long as it is well-written and well-plotted.
Writing a good first book is the easy part. Writing sequels is more difficult. Writing sequels that include the same characters as the first book and keeping the reader’s interest is really, really hard, particularly if you’ve already wrapped up their story with a Happily Ever After in the first book.
Finding one author you really like and working your way through their books is pretty awesome (see also: Amy Lane).
I have really enjoyed this year of reading, and I am still learning more about the genre and finding new and interesting authors (and revisiting authors whose other works I’ve read, too!). After taking literally a few decades off from casual reading, I am finding this a welcome and refreshing return to something that I have always deeply enjoyed.
on tumblr: http://ift.tt/1XEDHOE
I feel like the werewolf genre just makes werewolves generic bad asses too often without exploring some of the pitfalls of being a werewolf….like not wanting to rip your nice clothes because you gotta tear off a dude’s face. (To be fair, she normally would wear clothes that aren’t as nice, but it was an emergency.)
I’m working on pulling together a lengthy werewolf comic story, and this is sort of a little test comic to see if I can deal with drawing werewolves constantly. (Not a problem. It’s super fun to draw werewolves.)
So as a follow up to Wake Me Up Inside by Cardeno C., I picked up the next book in the series, Until Forever Comes. I almost didn’t – it’s a werewolf/vampire romance, and while I do loves me some werewolf romance, vampire stories in general leave me cold (heh). I’m finding this one surprisingly engaging.
The central trope for this series (“Mates”) is that on rare occasions there is someone out there who is your One True Mate. You are drawn to them spiritually, emotionally, and physically. This seems a very pat express route to Happily Ever After, but the author introduces enough interesting twists and obstacles (both mates are male? They’re forced to remain separated? One is a werewolf and the other a vampire, who are natural enemies?) to make the books worth reading.
I’m now looking forward to the third book in the series as well, and I’ll probably write up some thoughts when I’m done with that.
The latest book I’ve started has a brief scene and then is told in flashback leading back up to that scene. It’s good so far, and all I can think is, “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up…”
Also, I would rather be home reading it than at work right now…
To follow up on this, the author didn’t fuck it up, thank heavens. The book was Wake Me Up Inside by Cardeno C. Despite the dreadful Evanescence-inspired title, it’s well-written and enjoyable. I’d give it a 4 out of 5.
Ah, my first finished piece since graduation (I’m kind of ashamed this is the only thing I’ve completed since graduating…errrk….) This is a commission for Nightwoof.
Feels really nice to post something that is ‘up-to-date.’ It’s been so long. Four years, in fact. I think it shows. 🙂
I know nothing about Fallout, but the technique and detail in this piece are simply wonderful!
I really want more werewolf/non-werewolf couples where it’s less “I’m an alpha and you are my mate and WE ARE INTENSE” and more
Werewolf: Omg you’re my PERSON! You’re my person and I love you and you’re so COOL and *Wags tail with happy happy fervor*
Non-Werewolf: You are so fluffy and silly. *Hugs*
Every month. Like all the non-weres in the pack get together and go “Ah yes. Our dorky partners.” because occasionally they all just need a moment to laugh at the fact that they are basically loved by a bunch of GIANT ENTHUSIASTIC PUPPIES.
(Werepack cuddle piles are the best.)
One of the things Patricia Briggs did really well in her Mercy Thompson series – cuddle piles helped pack bonding among werewolves and was as much a part of pack life as dominance displays.
Have you ever read a scene in a book that was so powerfully emotional and vivid that you can still see and feel it clearly even months after finishing the book? For me, it’s in Amy Lane’s Keeping Promise Rock. The reviews on Goodreads are interesting – many low-to-middling ratings by people who say it’s “too angsty” (these are offset by more reviews raving about it, which makes me glad because that was how I found the book!). I don’t know if I’m approaching it differently, or if I can visualize the characters and their situations more, or maybe it’s just that others are just looking for a light and fluffy read, which this definitely is not.
I can’t really go into the details of the scene due to spoilers, but for those who have read the book it is the one with Deacon in the storm with Crick’s horse. It really sticks with me and I don’t know why, but I’m glad that I read it and that it could invoke that depth of feeling. I guess the book is going into my to-reread pile!
The latest book I’ve started has a brief scene and then is told in flashback leading back up to that scene. It’s good so far, and all I can think is, “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up…”
Also, I would rather be home reading it than at work right now…
