[thegreatgayescape]

The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet: Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism

If I could get you to read any one book, this would be it. The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, is not just a dream, a vision of hope in dark times, a whisper of what is better and possible. It is a manifesto. It is what I mean when I say Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.

Simply, The Long Way is a buoyant, campy space-opera romp, with wholly original world-building, hella aliens, an interspecies crew, a sentient AI, with a strong, queer, female protagonist.

You’ve seen the SNL short “Gays in Space?” Imagine if queer Piccard fans made it in 2018. And did it well.

The Long Way takes place far in the future after humans have already fled an unliveable, war-torn Earth. The rich have left to colonize our solar system. Everyone else, sometime after, left Earth in gargantuan fleets, set for deep space, never to return. These Exodens were discovered by the Galactic Commons, a society of technologically superior aliens. Humanity is fractured, an adolescent species among an intergalactic company of elders.

Yes, that all sounds correct.

Most humans in The Long Way are brown, with brown eyes and dark, often curly hair. In the future, most human genetic pigmentation has mushed together by necessity. The first time we meet a rare, pale-skinned human, this marks them as being from an isolated Jupiter colony. This particular human is a jerk. Whiter is not better, it’s just seen as a bit weird.

Yes, this still sounds correct.

Give me the gay: It’s everywhere. Humans are having sex with not humans. Gender, procreation and sexual attraction work differently for each species. One species experiences gender in terms of their lifecycle. One species exists in touch-centric culture, where everyone is pansexual, polyamorous--and they have “no-thanks-on-the-sex” down to a hand-gesture, as to not waste words. Everyone in the Galactic Commons has adopted the use of gender-neutral pronouns for when they can’t guess which to use. Also, as I mentioned the protagonist is queer, and she has her own romantic arc.

In The Long Way, the air you breathe in your oxygen tank is gay. The cool, metal floor beneath your space suit is gay. And the protein-rich steamed buns you ate for breakfast are gay.

But it’s more than that. The Long Way talks about struggling to embrace non-violence in a world that is dangerous. Chambers discusses what it means to be a person--sentient, well and whole. We talk about what family is, as the protagonist gets adopted into one. The themes of this book are gay, not just the people.

Some critics call The Long Way boring. (Do they also dislike co-op games, and Star Trek Discovery?)  

I was starved for The Long Way until I read it. I clung to every sentence, and desperately needed every page, as written. I had zero time to be bored, while the protagonist tried to maintain her secret identity, adopt a new lifestyle, while dealing with secret bombs and space pirates.

The Long Way has soul, joy, and wholesome queer content, but it’s not without its grit and shadows. It’s not fluff, nor is there anything the matter with fluff if that’s your jam.

9/9 crew members, risking it all to protect each other while being unable to comprehend the other’s motivations as often as not. It’s a particularly good audiobook for a road trip: http://a.co/d/j63robT. 

Find Becky Chambers here: https://www.otherscribbles.com/ and buy The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet here: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062444127/the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet/ (why is it five dollars more on Amazon?) Becky Chambers is off social media and keeps a mailing list instead: https://tinyletter.com/beckychambers.

There are two more in the Wayfarers series: A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record Of A Spaceborne Few. I will review them separately.

[thegreatgayescape]

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom: It Will Steal You Away, And Get Away With A Lot

Six of Crows and it’s sequel, Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo are a treat to read, like watching Ocean’s 11 or The Italian Job. However, these characters are a bit more original then George Clooney being suave, or Marky Mark pretending to be George Clooney. I’m here because there is a gay romance subplot and an ace romance subplot.  

These novels take place in Bardugo’s magical Grishaverse. Unlike her Shadow and Bone series, which mostly took place some time ago in Ravka (fantasy-Russia,) for these two books, we are in post-industrial revolution Kerch, (fantasy-Netherlands.) If you have read Bardugo’s original Grishaverse trilogy, you are rewarded, but they aren’t required reading.  

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are heist books. Are they perfect? No. Will rereading them ever be as good? No. Do they adhere to a strict formula? Yes. That’s the genre.

Book one is about breaking into the impenetrable Fierdian Ice Court to retrieve a prisoner, and book two is about stealing from a prudish Kerch businessman. In the course of the two books, the crew inadvertently saves the world, very Suicide Squad, very need-little-evil-to-stop-big-evil. 

If you are familiar with the heist genre, you know the structure. Act one: assemble the crew of outcasts. Act two: reveal the plan, using each outcast's skillset. Act three: everything goes wrong. End with a double-cross. Bardugo strays from the model about as far away as she can, while retaining a comfortable predictability. If you love Dungeons and Dragons, these might be your thing. The party is nothing, if not balanced. 

One of my main gripes about these novels is the party is too balanced. We have six, (well, really five,) loveable, broken characters, each on their own redemption arcs. Each get romantically paired off, based on their mirroring baggage. It does the characters a disservice to make their love interests so very dichotomous to themselves. Zero main characters don’t fall in love. Really. Like a Shakespearian comedy.

We have team rogue, made of Kaz, the mastermind, pickpocket and lockpick, and Inej, the spy and assassin. (Jeez. Fifth edition much?) I could just as easily call them team no-touching. More on that latter. 

We have team daddy-issues, made up of Wylan, the demo-expert, who’s got a rich dad that hates him, and Jesper, the gunslinger who’s got a poor dad who loves him. Spoilers: one of them gets a sugar daddy by the end of the book.

We have team WWII soldier, made up of Nina, who uses magic, and is from Ravka (fantasy-Russia,) and Matthias who hunts magic-users, and is from Fierda (fantasy Germany.) 

Which brings me to my second gripe, Matthias, as a character, doesn’t work. When we first meet Matthias, he is trying to kill Nina, his beloved, with his bare hands. Cringy but not a deal-breaker. Even Buffy could make the whole “do-I-want-to-kill-you-or-kiss-you” thing work twice. 

But Bardugo leans heavy into her Nazi-allegory, straight into gas-chambers. Bardugo wants you to fall in love with Matthias, a duty-bound soldier who got indoctrinated with hate, while Matthias deprograms himself from said hateful doctrine. But it’s unearned and it's uncomfortable. @reading-while-queer sums it up better than I can here: https://reading-while-queer.tumblr.com/post/168221649969/six-of-crows-leigh-bardugo

Those are big problems. Bardugo kinda gets away with it? 

Give me the gay: His name is Kaz Brekker. Also called Dirty Hands. And he’s my touch-repulsed, sex-repulsed, hard-asexual boyfriend. He’s the second in command of The Crows, one of Ketterdam’s rising gangs. He’s canonically dashing, wears finely tailored charcoal suits, has a huge bad-boy thing going on, and he’s disabled. Yes! Give me a heart-throb, who is disabled and asexual. I’m here for it. 

Kaz delights in his well-earned monstrous persona. But when we see him interact with Inej, he stops to get active, verbal, enthusiastic consent. And boy gosh golly, it is everything to read about how much he loves Inej. Yes! Give me stories about asexual people where they are passionate, desperately in love, and not the robotic automatons they are so often portrayed as, if not completely ignored. 

Both Kaz and Inej have their own trauma about being touched. I can’t personally speak to the authenticity of the ace experience, but I can tell you Bardugo got much of the PTSD right. And it was super cool reading about two characters struggling to navigate boundaries and trauma in the middle of a heist.

I have less to say about Inej’s queerness. I read her as demi, and figuring herself out. Nina and Inej have a trusting and affectionate relationship. Their romance is not canon, but popular on the internet, and not canonically untrue. Nina’s sexual appetite, much like her appetite for cuisine, delights in a lot of everything. Both Inej and Nina did some kind of sex work, which bonds them further. While Nina chose her profession based on a lack of better options, Inej was trafficked. 

Inej talks about how being Suli, fantasy-Romani, she was actively fetishized and commodified before Kaz saved her from the whore-house. Bardugo really pushes her luck with that troupe. Arguably, Inej saved herself, using Kaz as an exit. Inbetween Inej’s agency and Kaz’s asexuality, Bardugo, the real master of misdirection in these books, gets away with it. 

Wylan and Jesper are our canonically gay couple. Jesper is a useless bisexual and a corrupting force of Wylan, our innocent, soft, gay ray of sunshine. They do feel like more of an afterthought. But so does everyone compared to Kaz. While it’s fun to watch them flirt, if they were the only queerdos in these books, I wouldn’t bother reviewing them. 

Big picture, Matthias is the only straight character of the main six. Both Inej and Jesper are people of color. While race affects the plot, whiter characters are not better, as we see with the fantasy-Nazis. Nina talks openly about enjoying food and being big, and no one doubts that she is both large and beautiful. Kaz’s disability affects the plot, but it’s impossible to predict how before reading. These books are delightfully anti-capitalist, which tastes queer to me.

They read like a straight-cis-white-woman writer doing her best to write diversity, queerness and body positivity into her fiction. And it mostly works, considering I have lower standards for straight-cis-white-women-writers. And heist novels. And New York Times Best Sellers. 

Berdugo is a great world-builder if allegory doesn’t bother you. Her timing and tension were spot on. I could hardly put these books down. Yes to queer stories that are action-fantasy-adventure-heists. Overall, I give it 5/6 crows. Literally. Bardugo gets away with a lot but I draw the line at Matthias. Luckily, Kaz is everything. 

Check out Leigh Bardugo here: https://leighbardugo.com/ or follow her on twitter @LBardugo or on here @lbardugo . You can buy Six of Crows on Amazon here:  http://a.co/d/5eJmmx2 and Crooked Kingdom here: http://a.co/d/cojkPSr.

[thegreatgayescape]

Dreadnought-Nemesis: The Hero We Need Right Now is a Trans Woman and a Lesbian

I read Dreadnought Book One-Nemesis cover to cover in two days. I, to put it simply, am a superhero kind of person. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe being what it is right now, (a capitalist and cultural phenomenon, that has been changing the entertainment industry for over a decade now,) there is no shortage of caped crusaders to choose from. Especially if you like your superheroes to be white, or cis, or straight, or men.

The MCU only just broke out of its cis-white-straight-man-superhero-factory-settings last year with Black Panther. Black Panther was simply a triumph. And I won’t do it justice without giving it its own post, which I currently can’t do.

If you’ve read Black Panther comics about the Wakandan prince, you know definitively that the movie was completely straight-washed. The comic is not discreet about Ayo and Okoye being canonically gay together.

Hopefully, the Black Panther sequel will be gay as heck and then I can make the gushing post about it that we all want.

This year, we are getting out first origin story MCU movie about a straight, white, cis-woman superhero, Captain Marvel. And as delighted as I am, just to have a movie starring a not-dude, (no I don’t count Wonder Woman. Guardians of the Galaxy II had more of a feminist backbone,) I’d give anything in the world to have a Ms. Marvel movie next year.

Kamala Khan is Ms. Marvel and a Pakistani-American teenager who lives in Trenton New Jersey. Her comic is better written, her character is more defined, and she struggles to make her own path, her own costume, be herself, and kick butt.

Matter of fact, can I get a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur movie please? Lunella Layfaette, aka Moon Girl, is the smartest person in the Marvel Universe, and she is a nine-year-old black girl in Brooklyn, NY, fighting cavemen with her pet dinosaur and her inventions. She’s fearless as heck.

Who we dream into superheroes, which cape we look up to, big-eyed, and point to saying “me,” it matters. And for marginalized people, the fantasy of having superpowers, or any power, has a different flavor.

I can’t get into all the shit that happened last week but it was a bad week to be Trans in America. A memo was leaked, which discussed Trump’s plan to have gender defined as the genitals one was born with, wiping trans folks from existence. The Department of Justice told the US Supreme court that is was legal to fire trans employees for being trans. The mention of trans Americans was scrubbed from the white house website. In my fear and panic, I started reading Dreadnought just to be able to sleep and eat.

Give me the gay: Dreadnought, by April Daniels, is about Danielle Tozer. She’s a closeted trans teenager and lesbian, living with her parents and going to high school. She’s painting her toenails behind a mall when god-like superpowers get dropped in her lap. And this is when it gets interesting, her powers change her body into her idealized self. She insta-transitions in a burst of light. The rest of the story is about what happens next.

Danny struggles. Her parents want to fix her. Her dad is awful and abusive. The local league of superheroes is split about wanting to support her, including a super-TERF called Grey Witch who’s particularly gross. Her best friend starts hitting on her and won’t stop. Danny doubts herself. And Danny, despite all odds, is amazing. She finds the people who will cheer her on, as we, the audience, whoops and cheers too.

It’s the story I needed when I needed it. The trans content was so authentic and relatable to me, it felt like I co-authored it. But it’s also hella true to the genre. There are mecha fights downtown, planes falling from the sky, a masked vigilante with a grudge, super suits, and reporters with no sense of self-preservation. The second book in the series, Sovereign, is on my reading list.

if you are trans like me and need something to get you through, try Dreadnought. 4/4 Dreadnoughts to wear the mantle.

Check out http://www.aprildaniels.com/  follow @1AprilDaniels on twitter or support her on Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/AprilDaniels. Buy on Book One-Nemesis on Amazon here: http://a.co/d/7NpjIDT

[thegreatgayescape]

Join the Party: and The Queer D&D Renaissance

To say that Dungeons and Dragons is having a moment right now, would be an understatement. In 2014, when the fifth edition of The Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Manual hit the shelves, a giant wave of new players started partaking in the glorious past-time that is D&D. Most famously, the McElroy Brother’s with their D&D podcast, The Adventure Zone.

D&D appealed to many millennials in particular with this resurgence, perhaps due to it being a relatively low-cost activity. The only purchases truly required to play are the core rulebook and cash for snacks. D&D offers escapism. And here was a generation in debt, having trouble finding gainful employment, undervalued by society. As they compete for the title of #GayestGeneration, millennials and Gen Zers are changing tabletop culture. 

Amid the clatter of misogynistic gamergaters, and the mental evocations of men-children in man-caves, coated in cheese-puff dust, describing the womanizing exploits of their playable characters--another paradigm of gamer was on the rise with increasing visibility: the queer gamer. (Or, in the case of the very notable McElroy Brothers, the queer-friendly gamer.)

Join the Party invites its listeners, charmingly and playfully, into that membership. In the podcast, as the characters learn new, secret handshakes, we cannot help but feel that we too are being inducted into a secret club. We are being picked to join the kickball team. We are being included. 

The mood of the podcast is whimsical, joyful, endearing and collaborative. Listening to JTP feels like telling stories around a fire at summer camp, while eating s’mores. 

Give me the gay: Inara, one of our three heroes, is a moon-elf rogue and becomes easily smitten with powerful women. Together with her new friends, Johnny B. Goodlight, a dad-friend spell-slinger, and TR8c, a robot detective, with no subtly, and a heart of gold, the three convicts are hired to save the royal wedding of Prince Alanzo and Prince Greg, from a dastardly assassination plot. 

Yes, this podcast starts off by saving a gay, royal wedding, and I was so here for it. #WholesomeGayContent 

Beyond just having queer representation, at least some, if not all of the storytellers of JTP are queer, unlike The Adventure Zone or Not Another D&D Podcast.**

(**In so far as I can tell based on a quick Google search, but not everyone whose LGBTQ is out and that’s fine. I’m not the gay police.) 

JTP feels like a friend telling me a story they remember about the two of us, when NADPOD, and to a lesser extent, TAZ, at times feel like someone who wants to be my friend is telling me a story they hope I will like. 

Overall: yes listen to this delightful gem of queer joy, even if you aren’t into D&D. The production value is great, so it feels a lot like a radio drama. 3/3 adorable misfits just doing their best. 

You can start listening here: https://www.jointhepartypod.com/, follow them on here or on twitter @jointhepartypod  or support them on Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/jointhepartypod/posts. Their Patreon is pretty rad, they set up a discord chat, which has quickly become one of my favorite internet pockets. I recently bought three of the shirts from their merch shop, they are SO CUTE. Check those out: https://jointhepartypod.threadless.com/.

[thegreatgayescape]

Check Please: Sweet as Pie!

Imagine unwrapping Christmas presents in your pajamas, surrounded by loved ones, as a fat, fluffy cat sits on your lap, and you sip on your favorite hot beverage. That’s the closest I can get to describing the feelings evoked when I read Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu. It’s capital W #Wholesome. 

Check Please! is a story about Bitty. He’s a college freshman in a northeastern private college, far away from his small hometown in Georgia. In addition to being on the school hockey team, Bitty is a closeted gay man, an ex-figure skater, an enthusiastic amateur baker, and a Beyonce fan. Bitty, unfortunately, is terrified of being physically checked during a game. 

His team captain and crush, Jack, has his own struggles, as the son of a former NHL star. Jack’s relationship with Bitty develops slowly, sometimes excruciatingly, but in a way that feels extremely realistic to having crushes on your friends when you are twenty-ish years old. For a good chunk of this comic, we live in Bitty’s perspective, not even knowing if the person we like is physically attracted to people of our gender. Relateable. 

Bitty also forms close bonds with his teammates, Shitty, Ransom, Holster, and Lardo, the team manager. The star of the comic, even more than Bitty, is the chosen-family dynamic and nurturing masculinity on the team. Everywhere one would expect machismo, homophobia, misogyny, or Spartanic, bullying goons, we instead receive kindness, brotherhood, teamwork, and friends who have each other’s backs. 

Give me the gay: One of the things I love about Check Please! is how it deals with coming out, as a series of conversations, choices, and events. Instead of the common and heteronormative “I-told-one-person-I-was-gay-and-now-my-job-is-done” troupe, Bitty, and later, Jack, grapple, each time they decide to come out to the folks in different facets of their lives. We get the full spectrum, one step at a time, from the first time Bitty comes out to a trusted friend, to when Jack considers becoming the first out NHL athlete. 

Overall: yes read this comic. Especially great for when you are having a terrible day and you wish the world was a bit kinder. I have watched all of Yuri on Ice as well as The Goon, loved both, and can say that this is their media child. 82/82 fictional hockey games.

You can read the whole comic for free online here! @omgcheckplease Definitely read it in order. http://checkpleasecomic.com/comic/01-01-01 I personally also shelled out for a signed copy, you can get Book One: Hockey on Amazon http://a.co/d/6LGV0zw. 

You can follow Eric Bittle here https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease and Ngozi Ukazu here https://twitter.com/ngoziu and please consider either buying some Check Please! merch https://omgcheckplease.myshopify.com/ or becoming a patron https://www.patreon.com/ngoziu. 

[thegreatgayescape]

Carry On: The Antidote to J.K. Rowling’s Twitter Feed

It’s Harry Potter fan fiction. It’s Harry Potter commentary. It’s the perfect response to J. K. Rowling declaring “Dumbledore is gay” after not mentioning it once, in story, over the span of seven books. And if Dumbledore IS, in fact, gay, for fuck's sake, let Jude Law kiss a man on screen. 

Performing diversity is not equal to making your work important to marginalized readers. Show, don’t tell. Especially don’t tell us on Twitter.

Most recently J. K. Rowling has shot herself in the foot, yet again, regarding Nagini. Voldemort’s snake is now apparently, actually a Korean woman. The depictions of people of color in J. K. Rowling’s worlds are so lazy--she gets representation so disastrously wrong--that it would take something truly special and thoughtful to fix the communal headache that is J. K. Rowling’s twitter. 

Luckily, I know just the remedy. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. It’s got queer people being queer. On screen. As part of the plot. Canonically. 

Low and behold, we also have Penelope Bunce in Carry On. Penelope has an Indian mother and a Brittish father. Unlike say, Cho Chang, Padma Patil, or Nagini, Penelope has agency, lines, plot relevance, her own problems, and a personality. Arguably, she is the hero of Carry On, since her actions define the resolution to the climax. 

If Harry Potter was like eating a huge bag of candy, Carry On would be like the yogurt I eat afterward to both fix my stomach and to have actually consumed nutrients. If Carry On was on shelves as a kid, I might have skipped Harry altogether and gone straight for the good stuff. 

Carry On is emotionally intelligent. Instead of the usual struggle between good and evil in fantasy novels, I’d say every character in Carry On is a combination of nurturing and selfish instincts. Relateable. 

Rowell handles heavy themes without being haughty. It’s a fun, witty, romantic, fantastic romp complete with a murder mystery and a haunted house.

Give me the gay: The blurb on the back of the book is extremely vague so I won’t give it away. But this is one of the best romance stories I have ever come across. It’s super queer and very star-crossed. Both participants struggle with their queerness in unique and authentic ways, while totally falling for each other.

There is a sequel in the works, Wayward Son, set for 2020, which I am going to read the crap out of. In the meantime, Runaways, which Rowell writes for Marvel, is on my read list. 

I give Carry On a 7/7 Harry Potter novels I would gladly have traded, in exchange for having Carry On when I was 13. That doesn’t include The Cursed Child obviously. No one is ever getting that time back. 

Find Rainbow Rowell here: http://www.rainbowrowell.com/ and buy Carry On on Amazon: http://a.co/d/dZbMlD9. 

[thegreatgayescape]

Sense8: Psychic Trans Bisexual Polyamoury by The Wachowski Sisters

I would have loved to be in the boardroom meeting when the Wachowski Sisters pitched Sense8 to Netflix. I can only imagine it in DnD terms. 

“The party is made up out of eight different people from around the world who all start face-timing, then fucking, then dating, via psychic link. There are eight different simultaneous settings, eight mini-bosses that they must defeat simultaneously, and one final boss that they cannot win against. 

We have Nomi, who is Neo from the Matrix, post-transition, in a modern AU. 

We have Sun, who is the champion of her company, her family and underground kickboxing. Also, she has a Jindo. 

Riley is a quintessential Pisces, or she would be the eight weren’t all Leos. 

Kala is in a rom-com. She wants to be in love with her perfect, Indian, type A, boss-fiance, but instead, Ganesh brings her a Guy Richie extra, who she loves. 

That’s Wolfgang.

Lito is the bard. He’s an actor, and a closet case, but don’t worry, we’ll make it a little less on-the-nose-y. 

Capheus is the median between Ma-Ti and Wheeler from Captain Planet, except he’s a bus driver in Nairobi who loves Van Damme. 

And Get this, Will is a white cis guy and a cop. He’s an officer of the law. You with me so far. Okay. His dad was a cop and his dad was shot on duty. You with me so far? Okay, here’s where it gets weird. Will is like the exact opposite of a cop. He saves the life of a black male youth and a trans woman. I know right. He’s the paladin.”

The first time I watched it, I binged the first season in one go. I only recommend doing it that way if you start in the morning and take breaks to eat. 

Regarding Quality: The action, the cinematography, and the special effects are everything you would expect from the creators of The Matrix. It’s got heists, fights, chase scenes, anything-but-boring sex scenes, a tribute to Bollywoodesque song numbers as well as Telenovelaeque showdowns. This is eight interconnected movies you are watching all at once.

Give me the gay: The first time we meet Nomi, she’s having trans, lesbian sex with her girlfriend Amanita, with a rainbow strapon. The show basically says “ride or die,” and we go from there, unapologetic. And it only gets more queer. It’s worth mentioning that Nomi is played by an honest to goodness trans actor, Jamie Clayton, which shouldn’t be a big deal but it is.

Outside of the very important surface level trans and gay representation, there is also a very real “I-am-not-LGBTQ,-but-I-am-now-because-psychic.” The show has oodles of fun playing around with this.  All eight characters by the end of the first season, are basically sliding into each other on a very deep and serious level, and also on a very hopelessly bisexual level. PS. actors from the show smootch at pride IRL, it’s a thing.

Overall: 8/8 psychically attached partners for the first season. 

Watch on Netflix.com.