Sometimes You Just Outlast It
Pride Month Blogathon: Day 1 – Introduction to Pride Month Blogathon
by Brent Lambert
Writing this makes me a bit sad because I really wanted better for all of you. I hoped that by the time I got the courage to tell this story that it would be antiquated and an experience that felt too far removed for any teenager of today to really be able to grasp. Unfortunately, I hoped too much for the future and we are where we are. And now instead of looking forward to my story being a relic, I find that I am hoping it has value in a world of ever creeping shadows.
Being a gay teenager was rough, and quite frankly, it remains to this day the darkest period of my life. Sugar coating that fact would be disingenuous. There were many days I wished I just didn’t exist. Fear dominated every aspect of my life then. The emotion lived with me like a constant companion, stifling my ambitions for love, for friends and all the other things teenagers should get to experience freely. Because I was gay, it constantly whispered to me my worthlessness: nothing could possibly be worse than being attracted to another man.
I kept most friendships on a surface level, always afraid that a deeper look would reveal my shame. I didn’t play the sports I actually wanted to because I was scared of doing something that would expose me. The locker room, full of hormones and admittedly attractive guys, might as well have been the last walk to the electric chair, as much as I wanted to go into it. I avoided male friendships because my sexuality felt like a wall that would keep me from ever meaning anything worthwhile to them. I became the person that people poured their problems on because helping them through theirs worked so well in helping me avoid mine.
I did great in school academically because it was all I had. I didn’t have friends to convince me to skip a day, to sneak in a beer or get away for the weekend. I spent nights crying myself to sleep because I was sure it would never get any better and no one would ever want me to have any substantial part of their lives. Navigating romantic feelings was a no-go because the idea of even confessing feelings for a guy felt like pushing the red button and ending the world. So I walled that part of myself off and just tried to appear uninterested in it all. Good grades became a refuge and one of the few sources of actual self-validation I had.
Satisfaction came in the form of a blank page instead. I always wanted to write, but it wasn’t until my 10th grade Creative Writing elective that it became something therapeutic. In those pages, I was able to become the outgoing, attractive guy I always wanted to be, hopelessly in love with all the various crushes I had throughout the years. Those stories gave me hope, but in the end they also built the walls higher. I turned in more on myself because the fantasy of the page allowed me to dream of a better life.
But it’s not actually a solution to turn something you love into a drug to avoid all the things you hate. You’ll just poison it and all those problems will still be right there.
Horrible times can’t always be beaten and sometimes all you can do is weather the storm. No one walks away from a hurricane and calls it a resounding success, but somehow that’s what us queer folks are expected to name it. Society always expects action. It commands we take life by the horns and control it. They neglect to mention that those horns can rip you apart and leave lasting wounds. There’s no shame in wanting to avoid that. If that’s where you are, then be that. Simply outlasting a bleak time is still a victory.
For many of us, our teenage years were simply a landscape of devastation we spend our adult lives rebuilding from. I know that isn’t uplifting or inspirational, but it’s honest. And I have a strong feeling you would rather hear that than an empty platitude. But you can and you will fix all that has been broken. You’ll build monuments to joy, museums of happy moments and libraries full of love.
But in this moment; survive, outlast and endure. And feel no shame in it. The world demands enough of us, so don’t demand so much of yourself.
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Brent Lambert is a writer looking forward to the day when creating universes gets to be a full-time gig. In the meantime, he’ll enjoy the Southern California weather and all the best, authentic Mexican food. He always wanted to write, but didn’t think he could until a 7th grade teacher mentioned he might have a knack for it. So he always tries to pay it forward and put forward those kind of positive vibes into the universe. If you ever need someone to cheer you on to get something done he’s your man. Find Brent online at @BrentCLambert. Introduction to GayYA’s 2017 Blogathon
What. A. Year.
I began planning this blogathon the week after the U.S. election. Over the past six years, our blogathons have focused on general love of LGBTQIA+ YA, but this year, I knew that that would fall short. I was personally seeking something more, something that would help me grasp the world as it is now, and I figured many of our community members would be as well. This year, our blogathon explores two major themes: intergenerational conversation and the role that story plays in resistance, resilience, and joy.
Over the last year, I’ve been struck by the importance of intergenerational conversation. After the Pulse shooting, I remember Alex Gino talking about the history and power of queer dance clubs. I remember Alex London tweeting that “this wasn’t supposed to happen to you.” I went to a vigil at my church, where I listened to a gay man in his eighties, hand in hand with his husband, say, “I was spit at, beaten up, called slurs. I made it through that. Things have gotten better. That hasn’t been lost after a single act of hate. We’ll make it through this.” Afterwards, after I’d shared my story, he gave me a nod and a somber smile as we were leaving. I don’t know what he’d say now, after the election, but that was an incredibly powerful moment for me. I wanted to bring that kind of connection to teens who might not have it in their lives.
It’s equally important for adults to hear from teens about our lives and experiences. Just as queer teens look at adults and desperately want to understand how they made it through, I think there is also deep curiosity and yearning to understand what our lives as teens are like now.
The other major theme that our blogathon explores is the role that story plays in resistance, resilience, and joy. It’s an intense and personal theme, and I asked a lot from every person I emailed. Everyone who accepted the invitation approached what I was asking of them with courage, gravity, and excitement, and I’m so grateful. Through their work, this series has become a concentrated place for book people to talk to book people about surviving and finding joy.
This was an important resource to curate for me, personally, as someone who doesn’t just have an incidental relationship to stories, but has them knit into my very being. Lots of people have been talking about resistance and resilience since the election, in smart and necessary ways. But nothing I’ve read has spoken to me on a soul level for how to deal with this administration—until I started reading our contributors’ posts.
I think LGBTQIA+ teen readers in particular have a unique relationship with writing and reading. Many of us didn’t grow up reading about LGBTQIA+ characters, so finding a book in which we see ourselves reflected for the first time is often a memorable and impactful moment. When I was 16, LGBTQIA+ YA books helped me hold on to my life when I didn’t want to—they gave me a future that might be worth living for. There are thousands of teens who share a similarly close connection. For LGBTQIA+ teens, books can heal, restore hope, reveal unknown truths, and sometimes hurt like hell. Each book holds different possibilities in its pages. Because of this incredibly intimate relationship, stories are instrumental to our survival and joy.
This series is a number of essays that speak directly to that relationship. I see this year’s blogathon as a survival guide for lovers of LGBTQIA+ YA, for lovers of writing, on how to get through the next four years.
I hope you enjoy GayYA’s 2017 Pride Month blogathon, and find these posts as healing and helpful as I did.
-Vee S., admin and co-founder of GayYA
*I am immensely grateful to my friend Claire Spaulding who was able to step in and give our contributors some brilliant edits when I was too overwhelmed with my home life. This series would not be what it is without her invaluable contribution.
Call for Volunteers: Content Team Members
We’re looking for 2-3 new volunteers to join our Content Team!
Content Team Member
Content Team members keep GayYA going by formatting posts before they go up and scheduling promotional tweets on Twitter. Help broaden our readership base and enable our community members find posts relevant to them and their interests by promoting our content and making our posts look awesome!
Typically, 1-4 posts are sent to each Content Team member per month. (Exceptions include months without posts, and month-long blogathons.) Posts will be sent to Content Team members at least 72 hours before the post goes up; the post should be formatted and tweets should be scheduled at least 24 hours before the post goes up. Posts are formatted in alignment with GayYA’s posts standards. Between 6-12 tweets are scheduled for each post, in alignment with GayYA’s promotional guidelines.
Occasionally, we are unable to get posts to people before the 72 hours window. If that happens, requests for last minute help will be sent to the group chat, or will be discussed with volunteers individually.
Content Team members will be trained in how to format and promote posts, and will follow GayYA’s post and promo guidelines.
What we’re looking for:
- Comfort with Twitter and/or Tumblr
- Basic knowledge of WordPress
- Dependability– if you are assigned a post, we expect you to format & promote it, or for you to tell us ASAP if you can’t!
- Attention to detail– formatting posts can be pretty easy, but there’s some that can also take a long time. Maybe there’s a ton of pictures or links, or for some reason the paragraphs just aren’t spacing right. We love it when people put in the time to get things right!
- Collaborative energy– a lot of this work ends up being two or three of us banging out possible tweets or sending each other feedback/encouragement. Working well with others is a huge plus!
To apply, please email vee@gayya.org with:
- A little bit about yourself
- Links to your website/social media
- A summary of the experience you have in working with websites and social media
- Why you are interested in becoming a Content Team member
DEADLINE EXTENDED: May 9th
Interview with Ashley Herring Blake
When I read Ashley Herring Blake’s How To Make A Wish last year, I knew it would become one of my favorite contemporaries of 2017. It’s almost Sarah Dessen-ish in feel, with an openly bisexual protagonist named Grace you just can’t help but root for. Throw in messy, complicated family dynamics and a gorgeous setting and you’ve got an absolutely wonderful book.Getting it Right on the Road: Positive Aro Representation in Travelogue
Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Series: Day 5
by Ben “Books” Schwartz
Let’s be honest: there’s not a lot of aromantic representation out there in the world of fiction. Here and there, though, on the fringes, aro characters are starting to show up, and every time I encounter one, my soul does a little dance of joy. As aro characters do appear, hopefully they’ll be good ones, represented thoughtfully, in ways that reflect the fullness and complexity of what it’s like to be aromantic.
Aromantic representation is hugely, wildly important. I myself am agender and aromantic, but it took me a lot longer to figure out the latter than the former. The idea of being aromantic just never really crossed my mind as an option. I was lucky enough to encounter a few good agender and nonbinary characters as a young person who helped me figure myself out (shoutout to Haruhi Fujioka from Ouran High School Host Club), but romance is every bit as constant a presence in fiction as gender. Just about every adventure novel, movie, comic, or game includes a love interest of some kind, in ways that often bored or irritated me as a young reader.
But it was insistently a standard part of life, so I took it as assumed that I too would eventually have those romance feelings show up. I’d just grow into them! Well, a dozen failed attempts at romance later, I can tell you that they sure never did. If I had had even one good aromantic character to see in fiction, perhaps I would have realized earlier I had another option. Hopefully this next generation of young reader will have that chance, as aromantic characters begin to appear in YA books and comics.
As it happens, one of the few explicitly aromantic characters I have encountered provides a fantastic model of how to do it just right. Emerene, one of the main characters of Aatmaja Pandya’s delightful fantasy webcomic Travelogue, is established as aromantic from his first introduction in the comic. A close reading of that introductory page gives a whole ton of pointers on the hows and whys of handling aromantic characters. So buckle in, readers–we’re taking a journey through a Travelogue page.
A bit of background: Travelogue is a short-form meandering webcomic telling the stories of a trio of travelers as they go… somewhere. The destination isn’t important, nor is the reason for their journey. Each page, narrated by the childlike Nana (whose gender is never specified, but uses they/them pronouns), focuses on a single idyllic moment, like finding a particularly nice stick in the wood, or watching the sunrise over the hills. Pandya’s ability to capture the magic of discovery calls to mind Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!, or Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic novels.
As an aside, it is perhaps not surprising that webcomics should be host to one of the first clearly and beautifully represented aromantic characters out there. Webcomics have long been far ahead of the curve on diversity representation, both in terms of characters and creators. Without the specter of mainstream publication to guide or limit their content, webcomics are free to include genuine representation in ways that even the most progressive major publishers would consider too radical for mainstream consumption. The print world is starting to catch up, but very slowly.
The first three pages of the comic are each dedicated to introducing one of the traveling companions–Nana, Emerene, and Adi (plus Princess the Goat). Emerene’s introductory page shows him climbing a tree to bring down a nest full of eggs, which he and his companions eat for dinner. Nana is delighted with the eggs, and first says that Emerene is kind. Then they note that they “think he looks nice, too.” So okay, we’ve already established two things about Emerene–he’s a good dude, and he’s totally cute (and the artwork backs up Nana’s observation). Nana maybe has a bit of a crush going on here, and really, who can blame them. Emerene’s great.
The fifth panel is a shot of Nana looking up at Emerene, with two separate narration boxes. “But he is not interested in romance,” reads the first, followed by, “in the very least.” There it is, laid out clear and simple. Emerene is not interested in romance. It is not something to be questioned, not something odd or curious. It’s just a simple statement of fact. There’s not a lot of room for ambiguity, either. The first box on its own could be taken several ways, sure. Emerene isn’t interested in romance, but maybe that just means not interested in romance with Nana! But no, the second box of narration makes it clear that Emerene flat-out isn’t interested in romance “in the very least.” This isn’t a coming out story, either, nor one of self-discovery. Emerene clearly already knows that they’re aromantic, and has already told Nana this. Coming out stories are well and good, but we’re so much more than that, and fiction about us should reflect that.
In just two narration boxes, Pandya makes all that look easy. A common idea that comes up both as a complaint from writers and a critique from readers in the fantasy genre is that it’s hard to have characters who aren’t cis and straight, because those fantasy settings don’t have those ideas or words. To be clear, this is an absurd argument–if you’re willing to accept dragons and magic, surely readers can accept the presence of queer people. But I’ll acknowledge that the word “aromantic” wouldn’t fit with Nana’s simplistic vocabulary and syntax. Pandya doesn’t need to use it, though, and the idea comes across clearly and unambiguously. Fantasy writers, take note!
Pandya’s not done, though. There are still two more panels on the page, each very important! The penultimate panel focuses on the eggs cooking over a fire. Nana’s narration notes that Emerene “likes swords and cooking and sleeping.” The second block of narration leads into the last panel, of the trio eating together. Taken together, Nana’s narration ends, “It doesn’t bother me, though. I like all those things as well. So we are great friends.”
Ending on this note is hugely important, and serves two very distinct functions. First, it expands Emerene beyond his feelings on romance. He has hobbies and interests (and what excellent ones they are), even if they aren’t gone into in detail on this page. Pandya makes it clear to the readers that Emerene has a life beyond the page, and is more than just his lack of romantic interest. Second, the phrasing establishes Nana and Emerene’s friendship in a way that does not feel secondary, or like a consolation prize. Their friendship is not an abstract thing, either. It comes from their shared interests, and is shown through them happily sharing a meal together. In just these few panels, Pandya shows the reader just how and why Nana and Emerene are friends.
That foregrounding of friendship as not being lesser to romance is hugely important, and should be highlighted as a vital element of any aromantic representation that seeks to be positive and respectful. Many aro folk know the pain of being made to feel like our friendships are lesser than our friends’ romantic relationships. We get used to being set aside by friends when they find a romantic partner, or having our own non-romantic partnerships dismissed as not being “real” relationships. Pandya avoids that danger entirely, as Nana and Emerene’s friendship is emphasized immediately.
Alright, that’s a whole lot about a single page (and I feel like I could probably write that much about any single page of Travelogue). The big lessons to take away from Pandya’s elegant inclusion of Emerene are, in short:
- Be explicit about your aro characters
- Your stories about them don’t have to be coming out stories
- You can make it clear without using the word aro!
- Have them be more than just their identity
- Highlight their friendships instead of diminishing them
Writers, if you keep these things in mind as you craft your aromantic characters, you should be off to a pretty great start. And if you’re not sure how you’re doing, ask an aromantic person for advice and sensitivity reading! It’ll make your story better, and make you happier. Trust me–it’s worth pushing through that awkwardness you have now so that you don’t wind up hurting people with your writing later. The world needs more aro characters like Emerene.
In conclusion, do yourself a favor and read Travelogue, and then find some friends and get pleasantly lost in the woods with them. Emerene, Nana, and Adi have the right idea of it, if you ask me.
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Ben “Books” Schwartz lies to children professionally. They work as a storyteller, larp designer, and summer camp director, and have a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children from Simmons College. You can check out their roleplaying summer camps for kids and teens in California, Pennsylvania, and New York, or if you’re an adult, go explore space with them near San Francisco. When they’re not colonizing other worlds or teaching at wizard school, Books can be found on Twitter at @SunshineDuk, having a lot of feelings about webcomics.