i made the shortlist of a contest + challengers, baby reindeer, charly bliss, bike riding + more

Some professional/personal news

A while back I entered one of my short stories, Please Hurry, Leave Me into an emerging writers contest held by the Masters Review. I primarily did it because that story was finished and the guest judge was Kelly Link, whose work I respect. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but it helped me get back in the mindset of submitting things.

Well, I got some cool news that I made their shortlist! So I’m one of I’m assuming around 15 people that moved on to having their work actually sent over to the guest judge. I don’t think I’ll actually end up being a winner (I’m sure there are people who wrote stuff much better than me). But, it’s a real honor and makes me feel less nervous about continuing to submit to stuff in the future.1

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. I started this story the year after I graduated college, so it’s been something I’ve worked on for a longgggg while now.

Challengers

I saw Challengers a while back, which is a horny movie that constantly reminds you that yes, movies can be deeply meaningful without being boring to watch. There’s a lot that I really loved about this movie and, following my tradition of liking a movie and immediately wanting to learn more about it, this is a movie I’d loveeee to see dissected by a film professor.

Anyway here are some sorted thoughts I had about it:

• Luca Guadagnino also directed the Suspiria remake which I loved and is another movie deeply focused on the sexuality of performance/the physicality of sex.

• There’s no way that Guadagnino wasn’t drawing on at least some fighting games/anime scenes. The final scene of the movie is practically bursting with the same energy of a chaotic final boss you might see in an anime. Honestly, I kept thinking about Berserk, Patrick being Guts and Art maybe being Griffith. I guess that would make Tashi Casca, though I think that’s where the metaphor becomes a little stretched…2

• I audibly gasped at the scene where Patrick, overexcited, clutches Art’s knee. Pure sexual tension.

• It’s really great that the only real direct notice we get of any of the character’s queerness (aside from them making out with each other) is Patrick swiping right on a man while using Tinder.3

• I’ve never seen a top that arches like that…

Baby Reindeer

Baby Reindeer was nice. I got what it was trying to do and enjoyed the journey it took us on to get there. It did leave me with a sense of uneasiness which is probably best explained by this article by Glen Wheldon on Baby Reindeer’s approach to queer people.

Bike Riding

After not doing it for two years, I’m getting back into riding my bike. I used to really enjoy biking places when I lived in Hyde Park/North Austin. I didn’t go everywhere by bike however, I had carved out a little routine for myself of going to the grocery store, the gym, back home, and the occasional coffee trip.

The gym was the most liberating of those experiences. I’d bike there after drinking a bunch of coffee then bike home feeling all types of sore. It took me a longgggg while to finally start feeling comfortable at the gym and Covid really ruined that for me. Since then I’ve been trying to find a way to ease myself back into working out and then, maybe eventually, actually going to the gym again. I’d like to say it was just a body image thing, but it isn’t. It primarily sparks my anxiety really bad where I think people are looking at me or I’m doing something wrong or they’re noticing my sweat4 and heavy breathing.

Anyway, I value the idea of bike riding and living somewhere where you can ride your bike most places. I hate using my car to go everywhere. I hate driving (Zach does most of it). Also, Zach has a sweet eBike that he takes to work every morning and I think if I started getting more serious about biking (and we get a better place), I would consider buying one of my own and expanding where I bike long-term.

MiracleMan

I’ve been reading through MiracleMan because I saw it recommended somewhere online. I’m not up to date because I still need to read through Neil Gaimen’s latest release of the Silver Age, but I did finish the original series + the Golden Age. I really enjoy it, even when it starts getting super metacontextual at the very end.

Mainly, I like the sprawling scope of it. It sort of reminds me of why I liked the Karoka run of X-men years back: it imagines a future unconstrained by the conventions of superhero comics and posits a world where people are able to rise above petty and endless villainry and create Utopia. Which, for the X-Men at least, feels so much more refreshing than the endless “Well they’re mutants so we have to kill them all” storylines.