Busy, busy few weeks!
Good afternoon!
Apologies for not having an update out for the past few weeks - I have finally found a place to live and am currently going back and forth and back and forth on paperwork and solicitors and packing up my apartment and organising everything and so on and so forth.
It's meant limited time to sit down and write, but more importantly, limited time to play games or sit and watch TV or film or generally be on my own digesting ideas - effectively do anything that puts fuel in the creative tank, so to speak, which means that I've not had that much to write. No new podcast episodes either, unfortunately, as my mic and equipment are currently on the other side of the Irish Sea, too.
I'm currently in a waiting stage and getting through a lot of movies and so forth, so I'm expecting to be writing quite a lot in the next few weeks, and then once it's actually time to move there'll probably be another short few weeks of inactivity while I redecorate and actually move everything over to England from Ireland, etc.
I'm unbelievably excited at the prospect of moving as I've been looking into it for nearly a year now, and I'm going to be redecorating the place assuming I get it and all goes well - the building was built in the late 1800s, and my intention is to paint and style it in a cosy late Victorian fashion (minus the arsenic and asbestos), so I'll be putting up pictures and TikToks and so on of that process!
I'm actually working on a commissioned fiction piece at the moment, and as I currently don't have any up-to-date commission guidelines out and posted, I'll be working on those once this one's done so I should have a set of guidelines on my Tumblr, in case that's of interest!
Media Recommendations:
Death Stranding (2019) - This is a videogame from Hideo Kojima, starring Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen but with a bunch of other famous faces, including Guillermo del Toro (although just his face and body, not his voice). It's a post-apocalyptic narrative that I'm actually quite engaged with, and while its major themes are entrenched in a lot of bullshit (lots of pro-America ideology, a pro-life narrative), the gameplay is fun and interesting, and on a more subtle level there's a lot of commentary on the meaning of community, distance, life and death, and what it means to be human. Most of it I don't agree with and consider to be reactionary bollocks, but that itself is part of the entertainment, if I'm honest.
Une affaire de goût (2000, dir. Bernard Rapp) - This movie is majorly fucked up in the best of ways. It's about an extremely controlling, autistic vibes businessman with several phobias who takes on a man to be his food taster, to help him avoid certain foods he loathes. They then get into a whole psychosexual deathmatch where the businessman does wild tortures and manipulations and gaslights to the food taster, they're obsessed with each other, there's cuckoldry and orgasm denial, etc etc. It's deeply homoerotic and honestly very good although it suffers a bit from straight people being like "they're not gay, they're just super weird together" when it's... both.
A Private Function (1984, dir. Malcolm Mowbray) - Written by Mowbray with Alan Bennett, this film is fucking aces. Set during 1947, some rich cunts in a small Yorkshire town work to secretly avoid the strict rationing and to raise up a pig to serve at a private dinner celebrating the marriage of Princess Liz II and Prince Philip. A chiropodist and his wife, a piano teacher, get wind of this and try to leverage it to improve their own social standing in the community. This is a film all about class and class mobility at a time where strict rationing was supposed to mean that everybody was allotted the same resources, and it's so funny and so well-written and scripted with a star-studded cast - Richard Griffiths, Maggie Smith, Michael Palin, Denholm Elliot, like. Even if you don't know their names, you will watch this movie and every other moment go, "Oh, it's them from that thing!" and they're all great. Also, Michael Palin and Richard Griffiths' characters are absolutely gay together and I won't be convinced otherwise.
Big Night (1996, dir. Stanley Tucci & Campbell Scott) - Set in 1950s New Jersey, two brothers who are Italian immigrants own and operate a restaurant together, which is failing. Primo (Tony Shalhoub), the elder brother, refuses to compromise and Americanize his vision of Italian cuisine to make their food more palatable to the American customer base around them; Secondo (Stanley Tucci), the younger, is frustrated with his brother's inflexibility as he tries to sell their food and the restaurant to the people in their community. It's a really interesting look at the Italian immigrant experience, but especially the way everyone thinks about and discusses Italian food as so foreign and so alien, especially dishes that are now a part of many people's day-to-day, like lasagne. The drama in this is so carefully cultivated, and the food looks fucking gorgeous, the whole movie is a triumph.
Dinner Rush (2000, dir. Bib Giraldi) - I'm a sucker for a movie that's set over one night in a restaurant and jumps between different customers and staff (I've gushed about Boiling Point (2021, dir. Philip Barantini) several times before as an example of this format that does the whole movie in one shot), and this film is a great example. It's pretty understated, especially for a crime movie, but it's got fucking incredible characterisation and is super well-balanced - it's funny, it's sad, it's just generally impactful.
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991, dir. Jon Avnet) - This last one is obviously a stalwart of queer cinema, but I hadn't gotten around to watching it until the last day there, but I did enjoy it a lot. I will say that while this film isn't as blatant in its white saviour narrative as many are and the Black characters in it are allowed more complexity than in similar films, they're still very much foisted off to the side in favour of the white characters, and with an expectation they should serve or care for the white characters, and I would also warn anybody that hasn't seen it that the main character's weight loss is a constant in the film and is seen as a good and positive thing with a very anti-fat attitude that might be triggering if you suffer from an eating disorder.
New Works Published
Film Essay: Barbie Isn’t Anti-Men — It’s Anti-Toxicity
Patriarchy does damage to us all, and Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig) clearly depicts that.
Read on Medium in Prism & Pen / / Read on Patreon
Romance Short: The Baker's Hot Date
A shy man falls for a regular at his bakery.
4k. Just a sweet one between a baker and a… businessman. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon
Personal Essay: Is The Homophobia Worth A New Hobby?
Rolling the dice on homophobia in nerd spaces, talking about playing boardgames and all the baggage that goes with it.
Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon
New Serial Updates: Little Devils
Velma Kuroda, a young specialist in magical and enchanted antiques, is taken under the wing of Hamish MacKinnon, a master enchanter and centuries-old immortal - a crotchety old man possessed by a horde of little demons.
Read on Medium / / On WorldAnvil / / On Ao3
Erotic Short: Training Toy
A cheerleader loans out his favourite toy to the football players.
3k, rated E, trans M/many cis M. Continuing on from Stuck.
A cheerleader trains up another student to be a good fucktoy, and shares him out to local football players — featuring D/s, multiple orgasms, mild bimboification vibes, training, multiple penetration, degradation, objectification, anal, vaginal, and oral, big penetrations.
Slice-of-Life & Fantasy Short: Retirement Beckons
An ageing doctor tends to a deliveryman.
2.5k, M/M, rated M. A deliveryman to fae lands comes back to his doctor — his lover, too.
Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon
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