TV

queer girl

Quicklinks: @HHoagie knows what @HHoagie Means, and Other TV Stories

You can trust me.

Hi Everyone! Wow, long time no see, huh? Don’t worry, I’m working on everything. I’m seven chapters deep on that Furiosa fanfic, and I’ve started work on this super personal graphic short about depression (don’t worry: graphic as in graphic novel, not graphic as in blood and guts), and I’ve been submitting a few personal essays here and there with very little hope of getting them published, and poor little QGB has been kind of neglected!

Also my partner and I broke up. Mooooooooooooving on.

Over on Autostraddle, Heather Hogan has been absolutely killing it with the Pretty Little Liars recaps this season. But I guess there’s a whole armada of straight teenage girls who think Heather is out to murder their puppies, and by puppies, I mean their Ezra Fitz. That’s right, sweet sweet Ezra Fitz, high school teacher, stalker and sexual predator extraordinaire. Check out Heather’s Tumblr now (DO IT DO IT) to see her mic-drop of a response and be reminded of why she is the Hermione Granger of the queer intrawebz. 

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Quicklinks: Welcome to the Lesbian TV Party!

Guess what? We’re halfway done with the week!

I haven’t been able to catch up with the blog much lately, but these hibernation periods are good — they’re fertile (oh god, did I really just use “fertile” in a sentence about writing?), and when I get back to writing regular posts it will be with a vengeance. In the meantime, really fun stuff has been happening all over TV land. It’s a giant lesbian TV party, and you’re invited!

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Everyone We Know is Queer: Cate Blanchett Edition

Cate Blanchett told Variety this week that she has had “many” relationships with women. We’ve won the internet, I’m going home.

EDIT: She was misquoted.

We didn’t have very many DVDs when I was growing up (the VHS/DVD changeover happened in my teens). The few we did have were random cast-offs from neighbors, a disparate collection of movies I watched on our brand-new laptop over and over and over again. One of our first was the movie Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett. I first watched it one day when I was home from school with a fever. Tucked up into bed, this is the girl I saw:

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Quicklinks: Orphan Black is Coming!

Orphan Black returns this Saturday, which makes the lesbian twitterverse (and this girl) very, very happy.

In case you haven’t noticed, I love Orphan Black. The show is smart and funny and fast and suspenseful and super woman-centric. Add to that the fact that Tatiana Maslany (whose name I constantly misspell) is a gorgeous, sweet, funny ACTING GENIUS, and you end up with a show that I just can’t get enough of. And Season 3 premieres this Saturday! In celebration of the impending feast, here are a few appetizers to whet your appetite:

If you’re not in Clone Club yet, here is how you can watch Season 1 for free this Friday.

Here is why Tatiana Maslany is a genius and Orphan Black is super feminist.

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queer girl

Queer is Not Enough: The Quest for Worthwhile Representation on our TVs

In the new Wild West of queer visibility on TV, what makes a show worth watching?

Teen scifi show The 100 was a queer, feminist, worthwhile show even before Clarke and Lexa’s brief kiss. And recent dialogues around The 100 and One Big Happy have gotten me thinking about the state of LGBTQ+ representation on TV. It’s not enough these days to be “a lesbian show” or have a queer character. Just like making feminist TV isn’t just about putting in “strong female characters,” making good queer TV is not just about watching women whom we are told are gay.

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One Big Lezzie

You can always spot the Lesbian by her collared shirt.

NBC’s new show takes queer lady visibility right back to 1994.

Did you guys catch One Big Happy last night on NBC? If you didn’t, you can always head over to AfterEllen (cough *sponsored by NBC* cough) to catch up on the hype. And it’s no wonder people had high hopes for the show, with Liz Feldman and Ellen at the helm. But…sigh.

Remember in Friends (especially in the first season), when all we knew about Ross’s babymama Carol was that she was a lesbian — and wasn’t it funny? Sentences like “she’s a lesbian” and “Susan and I are getting married” were met with raucous laughter. Of course, that was a long time ago. High waisted jeans have gone out of style, come back into style, and (possibly) gone out of style AGAIN. In the meantime, the country has made great strides towards marriage equality. And especially in recent years, lots of gorgeous, funny, nuanced queer lady characters have graced our screens, playing whole people who had entire lives, and were also gay or bi or pan or curious or just plain slutty.

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Jason Biggs Leaves OITNB, Lesbians Bask in a World Full of Sunshine

Larry’s story is over.

The news that Jason Biggs would not appear in season three of Orange is the New Black BLEW UP my Twitter feed on Friday. Lesbians have hated Larry from day one, and the writers didn’t really do him any favors with his storylines in Season 2. Add that to the fact that googling Jason Biggs asshat takes you down a rabbit hole of incredibly offensive jokes he’s made on public platforms in the past few years, and it’s generally just a good day for humanity that he’s off the show.

Besides, let’s be honest:

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The Jenner Files: A Hollywood Surgeon Mansplains ‘What Makes a Woman’

Photo by Joe Bergantine
A Nordstrom mannequin (photo by Joe Bergantine)

The Daily Beast has me fuming with their latest article about Bruce Jenner. But not for the reasons you’d expect.

If you live in the world, you’ve no doubt seen Bruce Jenner’s rumored gender transition in the news. Articles have run the gamut from somewhat respectful (if that’s possible, considering Jenner hasn’t yet made a statement) to downright horrifying.

I don’t want to write about Bruce Jenner. No announcement has been made, so there’s really nothing to talk about. I don’t even want to talk about the media circus that has accompanied the rumors — Jenner has always courted fame as a means to an end, and we already knew how badly the mainstream media can step in it when trying to report on trans issues.

But over the weekend, I happened upon this article from the Daily Beast: 

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Five Things Twitter Taught Us About ‘Carmilla’ and its Cast

Is it…could it be…ANOTHER ROOM?

Good news, Creampuffs! Carmilla has been renewed for a second season!

I mean, it’s very exciting. But was there ever any doubt?

Nonetheless, we, along with everyone else on social media, are very, very psyched. And in honor of the announcement, we’d like to report on the top 5 things we learned this week on Twitter about Carmilla and the lovely actors who star on the show.

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All the Pretty Little Liars

THESE TWO.
“Emily, can’t you see? These outfits ARE practical. We can wear them again when we get married!”

It’s tonight! It’s tonight! The Pretty Little Liars Christmas special is tonight!

Excuse me while I take a moment to collect my thoughts…

PLL specials — which have traditionally aired at Halloween — can be a strange combination of heightened action and disappointing interludes. Like the murder train where the girls spent like five or six whole minutes of airtime fangirling out to Adam Lambert, and we were all bored (we were all bored, right?) and then suddenly Aria was stuck in a box with a corpse and we were terrified, and meanwhile Paige was Marlene Dietrich and we were all looking up how old Lindsay Shaw was in real life so we could be comfortable with our fantasies?

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