The Geeks OUT Podcast: Call Me Motherland: Fort Salem

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by Sam Johns as they discuss the ups and downs with Marvel animated shows, the new trailer for Freeform’s Motherland: Fort Salem, and celebrate the new contestants announced for season 12 of Rupaul’s Drag Race in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: Cast announced for MODOK, while Howard the Duck and Dazzler & Tigra are canceled
SAM: New trailer for Horse Girl

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Kipo & the Age of Wonderbeasts, October Faction, Star Trek: Picard, Batwoman
SAM: Perfect Blue, The God of Small Things

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for Motherland: Fort Salem

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

New teaser for season 12 of Rupaul’s Drag Race

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for Short Circuit on Disney+

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

Oscar Isaac starring/producing an adaptation of the comic Ex Machina
New trailer for Morbius
• New trailer for Black Widow
• New trailer for Bloodshot
• New trailer for Guns Akimbo
• New trailer for Stargirl
• Disney is doing a “live-action” Bambi and Pinocchio

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TV

• Peacock to launch in July
MacGruber series ordered for Peacock
Superman & Lois gets a series order
• New trailer for Stargirl
DMZ pilot ordered for HBO Max starring Rosario Dawson
• New trailer for ThunderCats Roar
Central Park animated series from Bob’s Burgers EP coming to AppleTV+
Obi-Wan Kenobi series gets episode order reduced
• New trailer for final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• Whoopi to join season 2 of Star Trek: Picard

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COMIC BOOKS

X-Factor returns and it’s the queerest X-team so far
Random House announces graphic novel imprint
• Boom announces new YA series Wynd from James Tynion IV

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SHILF

• KEVIN: Atlantiades
• SAM: Wonder Woman

GEEKS OUT BOARD INTERVIEW #6: Jayson Bennett

We here at Geeks OUT want you, the reader, to know more about who we are. To help with that, we’ve started interviewing members of our board so you know what makes us tick. Here’s our sixth interview!

Who are you and what do you do for Geeks OUT?

I’m Jayson Bennett and I’m the Outreach Committee Chair for the board. 

How did you first get involved?

I attended the first Flame Con with my roommate who was volunteering. I’ve been volunteering since NYCC that year and haven’t looked back. 

What makes you geek out? 

Well I’m a veterinary medical professional so I regularly geek out about science and animals. But in the Lands of Fandom I geek out for Marvel Comics (Xmen specifically), Science Fiction movies/TV, MMORPGs and Fantasy novels. 

What book/tv show/comic/etc are you enjoying now?

I’m currently reading the Nate Temple fantasy series and the Schooled in Magic series. 

Who do you ship? 

I ship Wiccan and Hulking. Their story is one of the better representations of young adult queer love in main stream comics. 

What was your introduction to geekdom?

I’d say my introduction to geekdom was probably watching late night TV with my dad and Saturday morning cartoons. We’d watch things like reruns of Elvira’s Movie Macabre, Star Trek (original and TNG), Batman and numerous “so bad they’re good” scifi movies from the 50’s-80’s. And I was obsessed with the He-man, Thundercats and Silverhawks tv shows. 

The Geeks OUT Podcast: Birds of Prey on Our Hopes

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by C. Blaine Horton as they discuss the new trailer for Locke & Key, get their hopes up watching the new Birds of Prey trailer, and celebrate all the nominees for the GLAAD Media Awards in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: New promo for Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
BLAINE: ABC’s next musical is Young Frankenstein

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Ready or Not, Suspiria, The Dark Crystal, AJ & the Queen, Infinity Train 
BLAINE: Puella Magi, Greedfall, Godsgrave

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for Birds of Prey

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

GLAAD Media Award Nominations announced

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for Locke & Key

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

New trailer for Brahms: The Boy II
New trailer for Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
• New trailer for The New Mutants
• Doctor Strange 2 loses its director
• Joaquin Phoenix wins Golden Globe for Joker
• Rian Johnson working on sequel to Knives Out
• 2019 saw highest percentage of female protagonists in movies

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TV

• New trailer for Devs
• New trailer for Mrs. America
• New trailer for October Faction
• New trailer for Sex Education
Seth MacFarlane signs new deal with NBC
AHS renewed to season 13
• New trailer for Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet
The CW renews everything
Roswell, New Mexico teases LGBTQ reveal in new season
• Trans actor Josie Totah joins Saved by the Bell revival
• Syfy orders Chucky series based on the movies
• New trailer for Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

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COMIC BOOKS

• New Harley Quinn & The Birds of Prey series doesn’t shy away from queerness
New Warriors returning for a new mini-series

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SHILF

• KEVIN: Tilda Swinton
• BLAINE: Cate Blanchet

The Geeks OUT Podcast: The Rise of Baby Yoda

Geeks OUT Podcast: The Rise of Baby Yoda

In this super-sized return of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin (@Gilligan_McJew) is joined by Jon Herzog (@JonHerzog on Insta) as they discuss the brief queer moment in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the success of The Mandalorian, new trailers for Gretel & Hansel and The Quiet Place: Part II, and celebrate Indya Moore joining Steven Universe Future as a non-binary character in This Week in Queer.

In this super-sized return of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by Jon Herzog as they discuss the brief queer moment in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the success of The Mandalorian, new trailers for Gretel & Hansel and The Quiet Place: Part II, and celebrate Indya Moore joining Steven Universe Future as a non-binary character in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: Marvel’s Kevin Feige teases a trans character is coming soon, or maybe not
JON: Star Wars: ROS’s LGBTQ characters get a backstory, yet their kiss is cut from release in Singapore and Dubai

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Midnight Kiss, John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch, Incoming!, X-Men, Doomsday Clock
JON: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Mandalorian, The Morning Show, Schitt’s Creek, Witcher

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for A Quiet Place: Part II

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

Steven Universe Future introduces non-binary character voiced by Indya Moore

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for Gretel & Hansel

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

Disney developing Deadpool 3
Cats is on track to lose $70 million
• New trailer for Tenet
• New trailer for Onward
• New trailer for Dolittle
• Fun Home is being made into a movie

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TV

• Disney+ jumps WandaVision premiere to 2020
• FX developing Stephen King’s Carrie into limited series
• Epix orders series based on Stephen King’s short story Jerusalem’s Lot
• Netflix developing another reboot of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
• Netflix cancels Daybreak after one season
• Netflix renews Raising Dion
• New trailer for Medical Police
• Quibi orders adult reboot of Legend of the Hidden Temple
Star Trek: Picard already renewed for a second season
• New trailer for Hunters

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COMIC BOOKS

• Marvel elevates Hulkling in Empyre crossover

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SHILF

• KEVIN: Ted & Alexis
• JON: David & Patrick

Interview with author L.C. Rosen

A writer for all ages, L.C. Rosen (otherwise known as Lev Rosen) is the author of Young-Adult books Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) as well as the upcoming novel Camp coming out on May 26th that you can pre-order here. Known for their sex positively and deconstruction of toxic masculinity, Rosen’s books are unapologetically queer, as quoted to give “queer kids own voices queer writing. So they can see THEMSELVES, and not their reflection in straight culture’s eyes. Let queer kids see themselves as messy, and making mistakes and HUMAN.” L.C. Rosen lives in New York with his husband and cat.

Geeks OUT’s own Michele Kirichanskaya had the privilege to ask Rosen some questions about their previous and upcoming work.

When and how did you first realize you wanted to become an author?

I’ve been writing my entire life.  At my 8th grade “graduation” the teachers gave me a little wizard figure and told me I was a “wizard with words” and was sure to be a writer.  I still have it!  I’ve just always loved stories and making up stories.  I honestly feel like I never had a choice in the matter.  Oh, except lawyer.  Dad really wanted me to be a lawyer (like him).  I think I made the right decision.  

What was the inspiration for Camp?

The real starting inspiration was this desire to do a contemporary queer YA version of a 1960s Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedy.  I have no idea where that desire came from (probably watching Down With Love over and over), but once it was in my brain, I fussed around with it until I realized that instead of a battle of the sexes, it could be a battle of the masc/femme.  And these movies always have a playboy pretending to be a romantic to woo a romantic woman, but then they actually become a romantic!  But that alone felt like an unpleasant motivation.  So I mixed up the elements a bit – a romantic pretending to be a butch to win the supposed love of his life felt like a modern queer interpretation of those elements.  But once I started writing it, I realized I needed to sort of get to the heart of Hudson’s masc4masc mentality and if Randy really feels like it’s love if he’s pretending to be different, and it opened itself up to more complexity.  

In 2019, the Met held an exhibition called Camp: Notes on Fashion, inviting a variety of artists and performers to provide their own interpretation on the word. In your book we see multiple meanings of the word. What’s your take on Camp?

Oh man, how much time you got?  First, I think telling people to dress camp is an act of pure sadism.  Being told to do camp means you can’t really do camp, because camp is about expectations and playing with them, so it’s defined by context.  Doing drag on a camp runway isn’t camp.  Doing drag at your grandmother’s funeral is.  So because of the expectations of camp, these poor guests were being told to do a camp version of camp, which involves playing with the idea of camp itself.  I thought Lady Gaga did an ok job of it, but she did that by making it about her performance: the changing of outfits, the parading in front of the cameras.  Celine Dion did it by becoming a camp version of Celine Dion.  She was making fun of her own image, toying with it.  But for the most part, I thought the outfits didn’t suit the nearly-impossible challenge. 

As for the exhibit itself, I wished they’d provided more context.  It felt like they were saying “look, this outfit has a big collar – that’s camp, right?”  But again, it’s about context – show us what this outfit was playing with in the context of when it was created.  As for why it’s the title of my book – it wasn’t originally.  This was a title by committee situation, as often happens with books.  But I like it because it has a lot of meaning – not just the summer camp location – but the idea of the performance of gender.  That butching it up is just as camp as a drag look.  At one point in the book, Randy even puts on a “masc fashion show” for his bunkmates, mixing up his outfits to look butcher as they shout stuff like “she almost passes” and “Ooooh, honey, butch!” – it’s masculinity as a drag show.  That’s why the title works for me.  Everyone is camping up their identity – even if it’s a false one.  

If the characters of your books could interact with any other fictional universe, which universe would it be? Which characters from that universe would you be most interested in seeing your characters interact with?

I’m going back to my inspiration here, and saying Down With Love.  Randy, George and maybe Ashleigh would worship the way Barbara and Vikki dress, enter a room, walk, talk.  It would be hilarious.  I’d love to see that crossover.  

In a previous interview with i-D, you talked a little about the disparity between Own Voices m/m fiction and that which is written by female (often cis-het) authors? Can you expand on this?

I think that own voices m/m work in YA is something that often gets overlooked and is actually really important and vital.  The way I look at it, an author’s first audience is almost always themselves.  When you write about someone who isn’t like you (as a main character), you have to ask yourself why you want to write about them.  And I think when people who aren’t queer write queer men, the answer is often fetishizing or exploitative.  Plenty of m/m writers who aren’t queer men talk openly about how m/m makes more money, so they focus their attention there.  Or how they think m/m romance is hot (the same way straight men would say lesbian porn is hot).  When you’re writing for adults, that doesn’t matter much, because adults usually have a sense of their own sexuality in relation to the outside world, have a sense of their own identity.  But when you’re talking about teenagers, who are still figuring out how the world sees them, if they look for that in a book that was written by someone who wrote about people like the teenager just because it turns them on, or because it makes them money, then that view is going to be in the writing, and it’s how the teenager is going to end up seeing themself.  They’re going to fetishize themselves, or see themselves as an object for straight people to tell stories about, as opposed to someone with their own stories to tell.  Authenticity is important because it tells queer teens about what being queer is really like.  And that’s not to say non-gay men shouldn’t write stories about gay men, but I think it requires a real examination of their motives and a willingness to make someone else the first audience and put their own viewpoints as secondary, which is difficult.  It means doing the work, and talking to queer men about their experiences, and how they see themselves and how the world sees them.  And it means not just writing about gay men because you think it’s fun or hot or whatever.  If you want to do that and keep it in a journal, fine, I won’t kink shame.  But if you’re doing it to be published and read by queer teens, then you’re essentially telling queer teens that they exist for your pleasure or to make money off of.  That’s not cool.  

In both your books, Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts) and Camp, you talk about the prominence of femme shaming of queer men, even within the queer community itself. How is this topic relevant for you as well as relevant for the YA audience?

I think a lot of gay men grew up thinking that being gay meant behaving in a specific way, and if they were like me, they resented that, and so tried to prove we were more than just the vapid stereotypes we saw on TV, and which our peers expected of us.  But the truth is, that’s just straight people telling gay people what being gay is: either you’re a stereotype, or you’re a “real person” – which means you act the way straight people do, defined by the patriarchy and obsolete gender roles.  

In Jack of Hearts, I wanted to show the way straight culture punishes gay men for having the nerve to be both a stereotype and full-fledged human, and I wanted readers to see someone who acted like a “bad gay” but was a complicated and good person.  But with Camp I want to play with the way gay people can internalize that and then become enforcers of the patriarchy ourselves.  I thought a lot about the idea of the “Special Gay.”  That is, gay men who come out, and whose homophobic parents or friends tell them “I don’t like gay people aside from you – you’re special, you don’t act like the rest of them.”  When you’re a teenager and your parents or friends tell you that, you start clinging to that identity because you know the moment you wander from it, you’ll be rejected by the people you depend on.  You internalize it – it becomes the most important thing about you: “I’m gay, but I’m not like those other gays.  I’m special.”  And when you start looking for romance, you know that you need to find someone else who fits those standards too, otherwise this potential partner will be rejected by your loved ones, or worse, they’ll see your choice in partner as a reflection of you and reject you.  So I wanted to play with that idea – that behaving a certain way, for queer teens, is needed to survive.  And in both Camp and Jack, what I’m really talking about is how coming out isn’t the end of a story.  It’s not a happy resolved thing like a lot of books and movies want us to believe.  One you’re out, you still experience homophobia – often even from people who love you, and that shapes the way you see your queerness.  Coming out is just a first step.  Not a happy ending.  

What do you wish to see for the future of YA?

More diversity, of course, especially in terms of authors.  More diversity in terms of where YA takes place.  More queer communities in YA, instead of just one or two queer kids with mostly straight friends.  More sex-positive YA.  More YA that says “there’s no wrong way to be queer.”  

Finally, are there any LGBTQ+ authors and/or books that have inspired you and your own work? Can you recommend any titles or authors for other readers?

Oh man, I have so many recommendations!  I’m going to limit myself to three.  Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass, which is coming out soon and I had the pleasure of reading early, is this amazing queer adventure novel – essentially imagine queer kids shipped to a conversion camp on the island from Lost fighting to escape.  Julian Winters most recent book, How to Be Remy Cameron, is all about shedding labels, which is a topic dear to my heart.  And I am CRAZY excited for The Fell of Dark by Caleb Roehrig, which I haven’t read yet, but is gay vampires and Roehrig does suspense so well I’m sure it’s going to be a bloodsucking delight.