Is Call Me By Your Name Queer?

Thinking more about a post I made yesterday over on FB about the new queer film, Sublet, and it led me back to my complicated reaction to Call Me By Your Name. Which I enjoyed when I first saw it, but have cooled on since then. Because, for while it does feature around two men who fall in love and have man sex, I don’t think of it as a queer film at all. The book was written by a straight guy, the film was directed by a straight guy. And the lead actors were two straight guys. But more than that, the relationship literally comes out of nowhere. And that doesn’t jibe at all with what queerness is to me. My queerness was there pretty much from birth. I was never really in the closet as much as I was in denial. I took shit from other kids and other grownups my whole life. For the things I enjoyed, the way I talked, for just existing. I knew there was something different early on. It was there in how I identified more with women characters than little boys were supposed to. It suffused everything I was. I was even physically assaulted for it, though, thankfully, not severely. My queer identity has evolved in the ways I understand it, but it has literally always been there.

Call Me By Your Name has what they want us to believe is a grand passion literally come out of nowhere. Two “straight acting” (yes, I hate that phrase too) men, who have never thought of loving another man for even an instant fall in love.

Okay. I guess. But I want movies and stories from people who lived queerness. Who fought for it, bled for it. Lived it with every fibre of their being. Who have gone through it and are finding a way to navigate the world and their relationships and all the ways that queerness informs one’s very being. And I’m unsure most of the time if straight creators have the knowledge and equipment to tell those stories properly. I want more queer creators telling queer stories in more queer ways.

I would never shame an actor for taking a role. Acting is what they do, how they pay the bills, and it’s a fickle career that can end at any time. (unless we’re talking trans roles. No cis actors in trans roles. That promotes the stereotypes and attitudes that hurt trans people.) I just want the industry to give more and more voice and opportunities to queer voices.

Our stories matter. And how they are told, and by whom, is crucial to them being told well.

Who Wonder Woman Is To Me






















Art by Nicola Scott

Anatomy of a Character: Lexa-Blue

So, the name came to me long before the character actually did. I just wrote it down somewhere and meant to come back to it at some point, because I thought it sounded cool.

Then, around the time I was writing the very first draft of what eventually became Soul’s Blood, I got into a comic called, of all things, Atari Force. It was one of those marketing deals between big companies, but it ended up being fun Space Opera, and far better than I expected. There was a character in the series named Dart, a mercenary of prodigious skill and coolness. As the novel idea developed, Lexa-Blue became character in that mold.

The second element of who she became was the scar on her eye, replacing the facial tattoos that Dart had. This piece came from the Legion of Super-Heroes, another far future comic that I loved. At one point, Keith Giffen did an arc called Five Years Later. In it, after a time jump, we saw that much of what had been familiar had been shattered. One of the characters, Shrinking Violet, had been injured in a war between her world and the planet of one of her best friends from the Legion, Cosmic Boy. She was left with the scar bisecting her eye. Another element fell into place.

The final piece for me was an actress I liked back then, one who had made her career in daytime and night time soaps, as well as in miniseries, which were big at the time. Her name is Terri Garber and there was something I really liked about her. She went from good girl to vixen, and then seemed to have found her niche as the conniving bad girl. She had an interesting mix of vulnerability, humour, and smartass that resonated with me and, at the time, felt like the energy I wanted the character to have.

So, Lexa-Blue became a combination of Dart’s competence and formidable fighting skills, with a scar and black artificial eye, with the cropped, dark haired personality that I could imagine Terri Garber portraying. And she just grew from there. With a healthy dose of my own snark and smart mouth for good measure.

The Automat

Have you ever gotten nostalgic for something you’ve never actually experienced? For me, one of those things is automats. Whenever I saw them in old movies, they fascinated me. The thought of all those different kinds of food behind those little doors, ranked behind those panes of glass just seemed so damned cool. I dig them so much that I actually put a super high tech one in Ghost Light Burn. Just because I could.

Ghost Light Burn: Coming Soon!

With all that’s been going on in the world, I have been understandably distracted. And as such, I forgot to share the good news that the latest installment of the Maverick Heart Cycle will be coming your way next year from Renaissance Press. It’s been a hard year, and it sure feels great to know that the adventures of Keene, Lexa-Blue, Ember and Vrick will continue a while longer!

“You’re on the Global Frequency.”

Global Frequency is a killer limited series written by Warren Ellis, with each issue drawn by a different artist. Miranda Zero runs a shadowy organization of people with special talents. Each has a super high tech phone and if it rings, they will be greeted with “You’re on the Global Frequency” and there will be some threat that must be stopped. And the receiver of that phone call has the special skills needed to deal with it.

The only regular characters are Zero herself and her operator, Aleph, who contacts the various recruits and coordinates the organization’s efforts. As such, you never know what, if any of the other characters are going to make it to the end of the story, which makes for a gripping read. Having a different artist on each issue keeps the look, feel, and mood of the stories fresh with each story, and Ellis crafts a series of exciting technothrillers about cutting edge threats.

I highly recommend this series. It’s intense and can get dark and violent at times, but it’s an enthralling read. There was even a pilot made back in 2005, starring Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero (which may have been one of the most inspired casting choices ever!) but, alas, it was never picked up.

Learn more about this excellent series:

Overture (Part Three of Three)

Galactum Year 143

*Where did you find this guy? He’s a complete nil.* She was using the node far more easily now, and though it, ey could tell that the thought of having a bioware link to Know-It-All embedded in her brain no longer made her skin crawl. Still, it made it easier for them to communicate until ey decided the time was right to reveal es true nature.

*Now, now, Meat. You weren’t much better yourself the first time you walked through that hatch. Give him a chance.*

The subject of their scrutiny, completely unaware of their opinions of his skills and personality, lay on the deck, his torso and head buried deep in the access panel. Continue reading “Overture (Part Three of Three)”