The Life of a Hookah …
The Life of a Hookah …
“Nothing in life is free, baby! Everything’s got a price. You may not see it right away, but if you dig deep enough or wait long enough, you’ll find out you still have to pay the piper.” – Mi Tia
Face it, we’re all hookers of some sort. Whether we hawk our time out to an employer, hawk our wares (books, music, art … what have you) to the masses, or that housewife who does her damnedest to keep the house in order, put food on the table, get the kids here and there – giving the hubster a little pickle tickle that will hopefully keep you both sexually satisfied and maybe, just maybe, he’ll get you a little sparkling bauble for your anniversary to let you know how much he appreciates you.
Yeah, babydoll, you still a hookah.
Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Hell, I’m in the same boat, so it isn’t like I’m trying to be all elevated and shit about this. We all hookah’s, bitch!
One way or another, that is.
So why am I going on with the whole prostitute thing? Well, when I have the need to promote what I do, it feels a little like standing on the corner watching the John’s roll by:
“Date? Wanna date? Dating …”
That’s what it feels like. I know I said on many occasions that I write for the sake of writing – that releasing it and promoting it isn’t my thing. It still isn’t. So why do it? Especially if it makes me feel all hooker-ish? Well, oddly enough, for the same reasons that I write – I just like the creation process. I release the damned things to see what will happen, but I’m not tied to it’s success. Actually, if it flops I find that more fascinating. Lessons learned and all of that rot, ya know?
So over the Christmas holiday I spent a fair amount of time working on a book trailer. Mostly to flex my video and special effects editing muscles (yeah, I got those … my daughter went to film school at SFSU … who do you think assisted in production of her school work?). Between Seven Styles on YouTube and Andrew Cramer’s brilliant VideoCoPilot.net site, I am fairly well stocked with the special effects and editing arsenal that I need to do some serious book trailer damage.
MY ANGELS OF MERCY BOOK TRAILER:
So when I decided to give my series a go with a book trailer (… btw, are they still a thing?) I wanted something different. So I dug around until I found an effect that looked promising. For those not in the know, Seven Styles produces some of the best damned photoshop actions (think of them as self running applets within photoshop that can speed along your creative process) in the business. It also doesn’t hurt that you get to hear his lovely Aussie accent in his training videos on his YouTube channel.
So why divulge this little gem to you all? Because the whole process is adjustable anywhere along the creation spectrum that what you would produce with it wouldn’t be the same as what I produced with it – even if we were using the exact same base images. The whole process is completely customizable. But there is a rather large caveat – while it’s easy to work with the elements that make up this particular effect – you do have to have Adobe Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop and AfterEffects) as well as a working knowledge of both programs. So it’s not for the novice to try and kick it out. The concepts in AfterEffects alone might make you run for the hills. I happen to have several semesters of AfterEffects training so I’m fairly comfortable with it all.
Next up … Andrew Cramer’s Video Co-Pilot offerings:
For those who don’t know who this guy is I’ll lay dollars to donuts you actually do. You just might not know his name, but you are very aware of his work in the industry – have you seen either of these?
Or this one?
Yeah, he’s that guy. Andrew Cramer is not only infinitely talented in the SFX arena, he’s also extremely generous with what he knows. His tutorials on his website are both entertaining and informative. Here’s a video I made using one of his tutorials – it’s from a AfterEffects class I took in college. I shot the video on my hi-8 camcorder – I wanted a rough look to it. The wind wasn’t generated by me – that was just my dumb luck that I caught it on tape. I just timed that when the column of energy spirals upward it was in sync with the wind gust I recorded on the video.
So, what do you think?
Not too shabby, eh?
But a hookah’s gotta have his tricks in his back pocket if he’s gonna be somebody, right? So, uh, yeah, I nearly bought the whole damned farm from Andrew’s site. Same with Seven Styles, too. So I’m bringing game. Been thinking I’ve enjoyed making my trailer so much I might want to start making these for other authors out there. Who knows what I can come up with? Taking me away from writing is a concern, but hey, nothing ventured and all that rot, right?
So any John’s out there wanna rent a hookah? This bitch is up for grabs …
Until next time …
– SAC
Social Media in a Trump-enabled Age
Social Media in a Trump-enabled Age
New Year’s didn’t go so well for me. A few hours before the chiming of the new year I succumbed to a 101.9 degree fever and came to the quick realization I was down for several days ahead with the flu that I’d watched warily as my fellow co-workers and friends drop like flies around me.
But one thing all that bed-ridden time gave me was enormous time to contemplate what I had been doing up to this point. Sure, I’d been writing quite a bit. My current published works number in the 746K words range between four published works (approximately 1,913 printed pages of text), with another 718K words (or 1,836 printed pages) wrapping itself up for publication this year.
I’m sort of the James Mitchner of Gay Lit Fic … well, as far as massively sized books go.
They’re the stories I feel I need to tell. So, I write what I want to write, almost to the point of it being irrespective on how they’ll be publicly perceived. I am very much a different writer in that sort of way. I don’t require the adulation. I spent a number of years in professional theater and had my fill of what “people think” about your art. I’m no longer concerned with that – just the creation process of an evolving story. Sort of in the same vein as one of my artistic heroes: Alfred Hitchcock. For Hitch, the creative process of coming up with the plot – and more importantly sequences of events he new would stimulate the crowds visually, he was in his element. The actual casting, directing and filming bored him to tears. I get that. I truly do. If people like what I do, the stories I tell, great. I’m happy with that.
But it’s not why I write.
I am also not one of those bloggers who feel the incessant need for people to read their shit daily so they feel the need to blab about shit that 99.9% of the time they have no business blabbing about, but since no one else is doing it – if they’re lucky – then they have the table for about five precious minutes and a little fame (or sometimes infamy) can come out of it. I mean, I wish Tyler Oakley all the success he can handle, but really, what does a cis-gendered, queer white gay boy have to truly say when a great majority of his audience are straight white teeny-bopper (yeah, I know that just dated the fuck outta me) girls. From what I can tell, he doesn’t have a massive gay male following. So he’s capitalizing on queer life to the straight young female crowd. The very same crowd who often make it into our queer spaces once they reach adulthood and feel through their long audience following have some special status in our queer spaces.
Put bluntly, they don’t.
Millennial queers like to say that when queer men resent women moving into our spaces that it’s a form of misogyny – no, we’ll let lesbians and our trans brothers and sisters and any bisexuals into our queer spaces just fine, thank you very much. I have many lesbian friends that I adore the crap out of. I am not a misogynist. I just want queer spaces to be our own. But a straight woman needs to fucking understand that our spaces (and yes, our goddamned fiction and queer literature) are sacred to us. We have precious little as it is. And here’s the rub: Those night clubs and bars everyone has been ditching all of a sudden are probably going to be needed in a big way. Why? Well, a little thing called The Trump Administration.
Here’s a brief history lesson from someone who lived through our toughest and darkest times, lost so many friends that it is hard to recall them all, and survived to do our best to never forget the fight we had to get to where we are now. So those queer youth who think a social app or a hook up app will satisfy a real life gathering watering hole environment are about to learn a valuable history lesson. We’re going to need those spaces again. I’m just sayin’…
Okay, queer youth, prove me wrong. We’ll see how history will write this next chapter once Trump and crew have their way. They just tried to gut the independent ethics committee from any external oversight. They walked it back once word got out, but make no mistake, it remains one of their goals. They’ll just do it quietly … as slow methodical dismantling. Why? So there is no way to see behind the curtain of their next dastardly deed. These are truly horrific people in power now. Even George Takei sees it coming. If George can see it, that’s good enough for me. He lived through it already. He knows the warning signs. The same signs I’d been noticing since the 1980’s – yeah, kids, it’s been that long in coming. Anyone try to tell you different is a fucking fool and I am probably safe in saying they weren’t alive and of an age to understand what was going on way back then. But the GOP plan started when they successfully ousted Carter from office. That was the turning point.
My husband, who is sixteen years my senior, argues it was even started earlier when his own father (who was a superintendent of schools in Ohio) said that the GOP had started to make inroads in dismantling public education. This was in the 1950’s. I wasn’t around then, so I have to take his word for it. And I do.
And this brings me to the crux of this post. You see, I only post when I truly have something to say. I’m not one of those writers or bloggers who just have to post about those fab new sandals they just bought or some brilliantly amazing food they ate. Or even about craft. I sort of laugh when authors try to give advice about what’s correct or not.
Darlin’ everyone’s journey to get there is just that – their own. Your yellow brick road to mid-level fame and dwindling fortune may turn out to be just a piss stained sidewalk – not a yellow brick road at all. I mean, sure, share your perspective if you think something is interesting. I’m not saying you can’t (I’d never tell a writer not to write – ever). But just keep it tucked into the back of your mind that what you went through may not, in any way, come close to another writer’s journey or perspective on writing. Short cuts, learned lessons, yeah they’re helpful to a point. But really, how many wheels do you think your reinventing? I mean, honestly. Hasn’t it just become babble? That whole “pressure of speech” but with writing.
Which is what I’d been contemplating all along. And I realized what came back to me with the incoming administration was: I don’t want social media to link my shit together. I don’t want people at LinkedIn to know what I am posting in Facebook. It only provides an easy path to collect all my data. Not in a Trump age. It’s not a perfect plan and I am still working on it.
Also, as a writer it was always incumbent for us to be public figures, right? Yeah, for me, not so much. I mean from the time I grew up I didn’t have social media and I got along with people just fine. I didn’t need it. It’s a nice convenience to know what some of my beloved friends from my school days or from other venues are up to … but do I need to know EVERY facet of what’s going on? It’s a bit much. I think most peeps probably think the same of others. We spend far too much time yapping and posting to one another when we should be actively writing and using our quills to do some damage to the oppressors coming our way.
Another point I needed to consider – I recently had an email exchange with a young man living in queer hell in Indonesia. He told me the story of finding my Angels of Mercy series and how reading it gave him something to hold onto. That man, and my queer brothers and sisters like him, are the very people I write for. I don’t require adulation or praise from people whose lives are not effected by what it’s like to actually live the queer life. Allies are great, but they often forget that salient difference – you are NOT one of us. We may share a thread of humanity between us, but you will never know our pain. You may empathize until hell freezes over but it does not give you a special voice within our community. You do not know what it is like to live in our world – even if you write about us. You still have no idea what it means to live the life. This young man in that oppressed country, where their burgeoning queer activism was on the rise until their prominent leader (and their growing rights) was literally hacked by machete wielding Islamic thugs in a very public manner that completely killed any hope of freedom they had from that horrible assassination. That man, that precious soul trying to find some hope in all of his oppressed world, and his emails to me, changed everything. I know what I am meant to do.
My New Year’s resolution: (it’s two-fold) I’ve scaled my social media presence way back. Twitter, LinkedIn and other accounts can’t troll or post for me. I don’t want the connection. I want to know when something hits a certain service. I’ve also let my author page be my public presence. My personal timeline is now just that – personal, for friends and family only. I’m good with that. I’ve even disabled public presence in other social media apps or completely killed them outright and removed them. The second part of my New Year’s resolution is that I plan on writing more in both my blogs. But only when I have something to say. It’ll probably be limited to queer rights activism for my author blog, and my own queer childhood through adulthood on VioletQuillRedux. Maybe one or two postings over at WrotePodcast, too.
This is also a call to my queer brothers and sisters to take up their quills and prove the pen is far mightier than any sword pointed in our direction.
I think my efforts would be better spent using that certain John Quincy Adams passion within me to be a true pot stirrer. 1776 is one of my all-time favorite musicals. Not because of the music or the production, but because as a young lad, John Adam’s character made absolute sense to me. I got him. I got his passion and his unwavering voice in the face of adversity. Now, that I can and will be vocal about.
I’ll continue to write fiction, but I’m not going to go all out with marketing. As I said, the creation is the fun part for me. Whatever happens after, happens. It’ll get little prompting from me. Not when I have bigger battles to wage.
I may be old now, well beyond years where I would be accepted in my own queer spaces (ageism is something we are still dealing with in the community) but I still have some fight left in me. That same boy who at twelve years of age took on his local school board and challenged their decision to change my district school to a traditional school from a year-round program I’d grown up with. Yeah, I’m still very much that same twelve year old activist. It served me then (my side won), it’ll serve me now (crossed fingers).
Some might say why post about this at all if you don’t want people to “like” what you do. I’ll simply smirk and think to myself, because these postings aren’t about liking anything. They’re just my queer POV as a man who lived through one of the most hellish times in our community’s history only to find himself near the end of his days and realizing that that battle was merely the rehearsal of what is to come. We have rights now. But there is no guarantee we’ll get to keep them. Any administration that wants to remove oversight has clearly put the writing on the wall. The backlash is coming, Winter is Coming. That’s what I choose to write about.
I’ll just will have to do all the individual postings in each of my social media points of presence – or not at all. But it’ll be my choice.
I’ve never been about the sales. But I’ve always have been about the activism. With the incoming administration, that’s where my passions lie.
It’s time to pick up that John Adams hat, give it a good dusting, and get back to work.
Until next time …
– SAC
When the World Stops Being What You Thought It Was …
When the World Stops Being What You Thought It Was …
Those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
I can’t seem to shake those words right now. I sit here, watching the cursor blinking at me, demanding that I put something down. But what do you write about when you’ve just witnessed the rise of something that portends your undoing? What words can defend against that?
History repeating itself.
Has no one here watched the signs of what was in play? I keep seeing people who I thought were friends and colleagues all contribute to the demise of the world I thought I knew and doing it almost with a gleeful fervor that God was on their side.
God – if you’re out there … deliver us from your followers. Being an atheist, I am not sure I put much stock in that request. Just thought I’d throw it out there just in case someone is listening. Somehow, it rings hollow. God, or whatever imaginary being you might cling to, has little to do with this mess we find ourselves in now. This was man’s work. For only man’s work could give rise to this sort of malicious evil that colors the horizon now. The world trembles with what’s to come – and with good reason.
Being old, and believe me, nothing has aged me quite so much as witnessing the demise of what I hold dear to me slip from my grasp, I do not fret for what’s to come for me or my husband. Our lives are in their “golden years.” Why no one told me that the gold in those years was fake sort of rattles the soul. But my husband and I will weather this somehow. Our years are numbered, the conclusion to our lives now appearing murky at the end of a not so long tunnel.
It’s not our lives that I worry about. It’s my granddaughter. It’s her world I fear for.
My husband and I share a love of history. It’s something we’ve tried to impart to our granddaughter, Keely. We’ve shown her both the wondrous things in our collective past, and the horrors of what can happen when no one is vigilant, when we aren’t taking what freedoms we have for granted, when we don’t tend to those freedoms and keep a careful eye to what might threaten them. She’s witnessed how that has happened before. So with tearful eyes she came to us last night, begging for some nugget of hope. We gave her what we could. I know it fell far short of the mark. I’ve never felt so helpless.
For some reason TL;DR keeps coming back to me. For those not in the know, TL;DR means – “Too Long; Didn’t Read” – if there were any more inane and insipidly pairing of words put together I can’t think of them now. Why? Because that phrase explains the general apathy we have to nearly everything. We’re simply too busy with our mundane lives to bother. Deductive reasoning, analytical thinking, philosophical contemplation are nearly all gone. An elitist construct that the GOP has systematically worked out of what makes a decent human being think and reason for themselves.
The dumbing down of society benefits those in power. Cattle to the slaughter, that’s what it is. We’ve become a populace that wants to be told what to think and feel. Well, we’re about to get our wish.
I tried to write my current novel. I tried to add to my NaNoWriMo project and thought: what’s the point? When put up against where we’re headed, it all seems quite pointless.
And make no mistake, the words I write now, and anything akin to them might very soon be considered prohibited text in the not too distant future. The threat is very real. I write Queer Lit Fic. Do you think in a Trump/Pence world that those texts will survive? That they’ll still be permitted? I’m not kidding myself. Not only have we just handed him the presidency, we’ve given him nothing less than a mandate to do with what he wishes with a fully stocked “yes” vote on whatever they think is necessary for their America.
But America, the America I knew? She’s gone.
So with apologies to W. H. Auden for a gentle turn of phrase to suit the occasion, I wanted to pen my goodbye to what could’ve been, albeit, with a gentle and tearful hope that somehow, in some way, the world will find its way back to a more gentle, accepting and inclusive America. Not for me. Not for my husband. But for those generations like my granddaughter and those still yet to come. I wish it for them.
So, with extremely heartfelt emotions, a sort of requiem for what will never be now:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message the America that I knew Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Be kind to one another – it’s quite probably all we have left.
Until next time,
– SA C
Taking Flight in 300 Words or Less
Taking Flight in 300 Words or Less
Mmmmkay. Guess this just sort of happened. So the folks over at Queer SciFi on Facebook decided to have another go with their flash fiction anthology. It was something I’d never tried. Flash fic and short stories represent somewhat of a dilemma for me. You see, it’s writing so, as a writer, there’s the draw. I love stories, plain and simple.
But short stories have never really been my thing. Being highly inquisitive from an early age, I’ve always wanted more. Probably why I consider myself the James Mitchner of Queer Lit Fic. My books are tomes – in the literal sense. All of them, with the exception of a single novella I wrote for a friend, are over 500 pages long. I write about headspace and perceptions – which I find to be a very fertile playground from which to write. So when the folks over at QSF announced a flash fic contest I don’t know why I became intrigued. For the most part short stories and it’s smaller brother, the flash fic piece, aren’t my cup of tea. So why’d I do it?
Perhaps it was so I could see if I could? I don’t know. My compulsory inquisitive nature, perhaps? Ma-a-a-a-ybe. Perhaps it just hit me in one of my rare “oh, what the fuck” moods. That must be it.
Regardless, I decided to take the plunge into leaner waters. But what to write? The anthology/contest gave only the theme of flight. Somehow I needed to incorporate the essence, if not literally, of flight.
I didn’t have anything to pound away on. Then a thought occurred to me. Why not use this contest as a writing exercise to play with a theme in a future SciFi work of mine? There’d been an element that I knew was a prominent thread in my story but I’d never actually written it down. But in 300 words? Are ya fucking kidding me?
But then I saw it as a challenge. “Okay, bucko,” (yeah, sometimes I use antiquated slang phrases to address myself) so I metaphorically stared myself down and said, “… let’s see whatcha got, kid.”
So the story deals with Mohawk Indians, amongst the other nations of the Six Nations confederacy, who are the super heroes of my tale. Not many know a lot about Iroquoian/Haudenusaunee history. Though we’ve been the most influential in US history. Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were very serious Iroquoian buffs. They steeped themselves in our form of governance to help shape America’s. Bundle of arrows in the eagle’s grasp on the back of the dollar bill? That’s us. The large wooden staff carried in on joint sessions of Congress? That’s us, too. Even the phrase, “We the People…” Yup, the same phrase that was in our Great Law of Peace hundreds of years before Jefferson penned it. But I digress.
Writing this was more than a challenge. I was writing a very important plot element to a series of books that mean the world to me. They are my attempt at my own Lord of the Rings. They are epic sweeping SciFi that first appears as pure fantasy only to sort itself within the series that it’s really Quantum Mechanics in play – not magic. I am quite literally taking Arthur C. Clarke’s quote to heart. Anyway, so there I was, trying to put something together, a scene if you will, to show how a hero (one of many) in my story – think Star Wars Jedi vs. Dark Side Darth’s – where the hero is converted to a villain. At one point in their collective past, my heroes were culled and changed through rather nefarious means into an army of bad guys – very much against their will. A raping as much as a culling. The process can only happen at the moment of death. It’s a very tricky thing to pull off.
So I plotted quickly to tell a small vignette – a slice of one such hero being culled from her Guardian brethren, into the world of the Flintlings (my bad guys). So I had Mohawk peeps, a death, the transference of my hero at the time of her bloody death, the raping of her soul and the enslaving of it for the Flintlings nefarious purposes, and I had to do it in 300 words. Oy! The scene may never appear in the actual story at all. It was the first time I’d transcribed it from what I had in my head the whole time I’d been penning the other parts of the book. I used characters that don’t appear in the works at all. Just something I dreamt up on the spot to get it all down. Well, not all down … I’d need more words for that. But as a framework it sort of worked.
Somehow I managed it. My little exercise completed I sent it into the contest, not really thinking anything would come of it. To be honest, I thought they’d reject it outright. “What the bloody fuck is this?” I imagined. It was my first ever flash fic. But somehow, and I can’t say why, it was accepted and they included it in their anthology. So now I’m a hybrid author. Who bloody knew?
My story Transcendent, appears in the Paranormal segment of the book. Not sure what qualified it for that categorization as it doesn’t have a paranormal element in the story because it’s definitely tech, but I’m happy it’s there anyway.
There are some marvelous pieces in the book. And they’re quick reads, for like when you’re in the doctor’s office waiting room. You can easily skim several of them while the nurses and medical office people occupy their time with who knows what while you sit there, having arrived way before your appointed time, and they don’t seem to bother with you until like ten or fifteen minutes past your appointed time. Okay, that came out like I have a bone to pick with medical staff, doesn’t it? Anyway, the book is seriously great for times like that. Or while your kid is wrapping up Lacrosse practice and you’re sitting in the car trying to keep cool on a hot day. Yeah, like that, too. You can easily knock out ten or twelve of them in one sitting.
Oh, sidebar note: I worked a small bit of Mohawk humor into it. We natives like to do that – smoke signal ourselves. But I’ll let you in on the small joke: The names I use for my lesbian characters actually have a funny sort of Mohawk in-joke. The Guardian woman who is dying – her name means “hunter/gatherer of fruit” and her wife’s name that I mention in the story means “low hanging fruit” – I couldn’t resist. It’s in our genes. We like to tease each other that way. Not that I think there’ll be a plethora of Mohawk readers of this book. But if there are, they’ll get the sexual innuendo reference. Oughta give them a small smirk or snort for their efforts.
So yeah, pick this baby up. Despite my usual pasadena attitude with regards to short stories and flash fic pieces, I found myself immersed in them nonetheless. Maybe I’m evolving now that I’ve written one? Nah, can’t be. I’d have to turn in my Mitchner fanboy card then. #NothingDoin.
Until next time …
– SA C
The 2016 Queer Sci Fi Flash Fiction anthology, “Flight”, is here, and I have a story in it! It’s a really cool concept:
A 300-word story should be easy, right? Many of our entrants say it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever written.
Queer Sci Fi’s Annual Flash Fiction Contest challenges authors to write a complete LGBTQ speculative fiction micro-story on a specific theme. “Flight” leaves much for the authors to interpret—winged creatures, flight and space vehicles, or fleeing from dire circumstances.
Some astonishing stories were submitted—from horrific, bloodcurdling pieces to sweet, contemplative ones—and all LGBTQ speculative fiction. The stories in this anthology include AI’s and angels, winged lions and wayward aliens. Smart, snappy slice of life pieces written for entertainment or for social commentary. Join us for brief and often surprising trips into 110 speculative fiction authors’ minds.
The book us available in eBook form (4.99), and will soon be available in paperback with b/w illustrations inside (12.99) and in a special collector’s edition with color illustrations (24.99).
Buy Links
Excerpt – From Transcendent by SA Collins –
Blood burst from my lips. Too much blood. Painfully, I tried to roll over; some small part of me accepted the honor of fighting hard and losing the battle. Tonight, I die with dignity.
Instinctively, I pulled upon the Dark. Feeble threads coursed through me, far too little to correct what lie beyond repair. I felt the enemy’s gaze upon me. I wished he would just finish the job.
My fingers pressed into the earth, sodden with my blood and the waters of the river. I coughed. I pulled myself, painfully, along the water’s edge. To where though, I knew not. Odd that, in the end, I thought not of myself but of Wahyawekon, my beloved wife. Inwardly, I wept.
A hand pulled hard upon my blood-soaked hair, turning me over to face him. A malevolent glee colored his face — his victory complete.
I felt my life slipping, like the slip of a fish when you think you have it in your hands. One last breath, coppery and wet, filled my mouth and lungs.
“Karhakonha, you fought well,” he said in Mohawk. “Your new life awaits.” …
(for more you’ll have to pick up the book … *snort)
Wonder Woman, The JLA and Why Comics Matter To Queers
Wonder Woman, The JLA and Why Comics Matter To Queers
The Justice League Concept Art
San Diego Comic Con JUSTICE LEAGUE Trailer Release
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So this is an impromptu entry. Just something I felt I had to write about with Comic Con coming to a close this year.
I’ve gone to Comic Con since its very early days when it was a collection of comic book sellers and Hollywood hadn’t attached itself to the massive marketing event it is today. Back then it was just a bunch of geeks who’d get together to celebrate our communal geekdom.
I reveled in those days. I was a comic book fan since my father introduced me to it when I was a boy of five. Aquaman was my first. Dad seemed to like him a lot so he was my very first exposure to the world of super heroes. He’s always been an instant love of mine. He’s been much maligned and dumbed down over the decades, which sort of always hurt that people have a rather skewed and uninformed understanding of who Arthur Curry and his super hero moniker of Aquaman.
Many would be surprised to find out he’s actually a demi-god. His powers easily rival those of Wonder Woman or Superman. Talking to fish is fairly low on his power level, like we think of breathing. He’s even KICKED Superman’s ass in a one on one combat. So yeah, I am totes down with Jason Momoa bringing everyone up to speed on how bad ass Aquaman really is. Bout time y’all were schooled in this guy’s supreme epicness.
Glad to see that Justice League’s trailer shows Aquaman stepping up to the plate in a big way. It’ll also be interesting to see how Diana Prince and Arthur Curry settle their differences given that Atlantians and Amazon’s don’t always see eye-to-eye (given their allegiances to Zeus/Aphrodite and Hera for the Amazon’s and Poseidon for Arthur’s peeps – all of which have been at each other at one point or another throughout history).
Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman
And to cast Momoa (a Pacific Islander by heritage) as the Sea King is just absolutely brilliant in my book, say nothing of the fact that a solid Person of Color is one of the big players in the whole JLA realm is fucking off the chain cool in the BIGGEST bad assed way.
But you see, my love of comic book heroes is steeped very much in who I am as a queer man. These people often had to operate outside the spectrum of normal life. As a queer kid, I got that on so many levels. You knew you grew up different than everyone else. You knew that you had talents and gifts that people wouldn’t understand and might even be afraid of. So there were direct parallels for queer kids to draw from the super hero realm. The sad stark truth, until much later in the game, we didn’t have any real representation of superheroes who were just like us – queer – and unabashedly so. That’s changed quite a bit, yet the main heroes are still overridingly straight. No gay Superman, no lesbian Wonder Woman (though there are great hints of it throughout Amazon society at large that could definitely be argued), no sexually fluid Aquaman (mores the pity on that one alone …).
My favorite concept art of Momoa as Aquaman. It graced my iPhone wallpaper for many months.
Which brings me to the greatest love in my queer boy life – Wonder Woman.
San Diego Comic Con WONDER WOMAN Trailer Release
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Let me perfectly frank here: I am a dyed in the wool DC comic fan. I get the whole Marvel thing, and yeah, they’ve even been more forward an progressive where queer superheroes are concerned. Bravo for them. But Aquaman was my first. So DC has always ruled my world from that perspective. Doesn’t mean I am not into Marvel heroes, just they take a back seat to my DC realm.
But getting back to Wonder Woman. I discovered her all on my own. While my love for Aquaman has NEVER diminished, Diana quickly became everything to me. As a young gay boy I realized just how much I identified with her. Her sense of wonder at how to move through man’s world. How she had this awe and amazement in her burgeoning love for Steve Trevor. All of it. I ate her up like mother’s milk. She was epic and awe inspiring … mostly because she was so closely allied with the Greek mythology that also kept my interest – probably why she rose to become equal to Aquaman, too. I loved them both desperately.
My father probably wondered at my fascination and obsession with Diana Prince. It was fairly obvious to him I was gay. He said he knew that before I was born. I’ve written about that before (both here and on my other site – Violet Quill Redux). Even during the heady disco days of the seventies I had my Wonder Woman fix in so many ways – both on my Saturday morning cartoons (we didn’t have the luxury of a cartoon network back in my day) with the Super Friends (which I totally lay blame on when Aquaman started to become dumbed down) as well as the short lived but wildy cool – to a queer kid like me – Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter. That woman will ALWAYS be a goddess to me!
That poster graced my walls – along with many others of Lynda for many years. It confused the hell out of my dad because my adoration of anything Lynda Carter knew no bounds. He just didn’t get the gayboy connection to how it all worked in my head. Poor Dad, sorry for the misdirect – it wasn’t intentional, Pops.
Anywho, queer kids needed superheroes. I dare say probably more so than our straight counterparts. Only because as queer kids, we had so very little going for us that these characters meant the world to us. They gave us hope. We identified with them in many, many ways. The subversive nature of their lives and loves. How secretive they had to be in the world around them. We got it – on an EPIC scale.
With the close of another SD Comic Con (one that I missed this year) I can’t help but feel nostalgic over not only not attending this year, but the general feeling that these characters matter so much to a queer man like me. Their ideals, their pushing against the monumental odds against them. I get it, in ways that I am sure most people never think about them. They just see the heroes journey. Whereas we see the double-life they have to lead in order to do some good in the world. The duplicity of it all. And queers get it. It mirrors our own lives in so many ways. That big shiny assed unicorn that we all are. It wants to come out and spread rainbows all over the fucking place, but often can’t.
So yeah, so hyped up for the new Wonder Woman and Justice League flicks that are in the pipeline. Momoa is SOOOOO gonna kill it as my fave Aquaman. I am sooo down with him taking the role I get fucking giddier than I’ve ever been about something. I fucking tremble if I think about it too much. And, as I’ve said it before, if I had to wait all this time to get Wonder Woman to the big screen – then I am okay with it. Gal Gadot fucking nails Diana Prince to the fucking wall! Consider the mantle successively passed from my hallowed Lynda Carter to Gal. I can’t wait to see what happens there.
Oh, and one side note: queer identified Ezra Miller as Barry Allen. He is sooooo fucking sexy that I’ve sorta forgotten all about Grant Gustin’s take on Barry. Sorry Grant, but just knowing Ezra’s a gender fluid sorta guy … yeah it brings him one step closer to my queer boy life. And I am so glad they’re letting him be the humor in the DCU. He is so gonna rock that role like no one’s business!
Sexy as fuck Ezra Miller donning the lightning suit … gonna rock my world. I already feel it!
So, until next time …
– SA C
And one more of Ezra … just ’cause I gotta.
