We get two episodes of Hacksthis week, starting with “D’Christening”, written by Joe Mande and directed by Doron Max Hagay. Deborah and Ava — freshly allies again — finally hit third in the late-night rankings, which is not last place! Things are looking up! My girls are on a path toward late-night success!
Jimmy and Kayla are not doing as well, Kayla’s dog client apparently prone to biting and therefore a huge liability. Dance Mom meanwhile is spiraling out, high on the thrills of Hollywood fame and on literal whippets and buzz balls. Her life has become a never-ending bender, which threatens the Old Navy brand deal she just got. Jimmy and Kayla try to reel her in, but Dance Mom — who is not even a mom, it turns out — cannot be contained. I haven’t had a chance to shout out Julianne Nicholson yet this season, but she is killing it.
The bulk of this first episode takes place at the titular christening of DJ’s fresh baby. Deborah is determined to be as big a nuisance as possible at this family event due to a years-long feud with the Catholic church after she did a set at their expense. But when she acts out at the church, DJ threatens going LC or NC — low contact or no contact. Like Ava and Deborah last episode, this signals a new stage of DJ and Deborah’s toxic relationship. DJ sets firm boundaries. She won’t let Ava’s bullshit impact her baby. I’m so glad we finally get some of Kaitlin Olson (other than on FaceTime) this season. Give her awards for the way she says “the grand opening of Wet Seal.”
It seems as if Hacks season four is determined to deliver at least one emotionally devastating scene each episode. “D’Christening”‘s happens after Marcus and Ava bond over a joint outside the church. DJ has asked Ava to be the baby’s godmother, and Marcus starts freaking Ava out by talking about how great his godfather, who taught him long division and helped him come out to his parents, was. Ava runs to DJ and tells her she couldn’t possibly be the godmother her baby deserves. Then DJ gives our requisite emotionally devastating monologue:
“I asked you to be his godmother because you understand my mom. You believe in a version of her that I never could. I want him to know that version, not mine. That’s too clouded with my own bullshit with her. I wish I could have the relationship that you guys have, but I can’t. So I think you’d be the perfect person for the job.”
Up until this point, the episode sort of feels like filler, a chance for Deborah and Ava to step aside from the chaos of the show and for us to check in more thoroughly with Jimmy and Kayla for the first time in a few episodes, but DJ’s monologue tethers the episode more to the overall arc of the season. It wouldn’t resonate as much if not for Deborah and Ava’s reunification. And it speaks to the emotional core of the season, this idea that Deborah and Ava’s relationship transcends definition. Ava can be a bridge between DJ and Deborah when it comes to the baby. DJ and Deborah’s relationship, in many ways, is irreparable. DJ realizing she can’t change the relationship but can benefit from Ava’s different relationship with her mother marks huge growth. On a show full of bad moms, DJ is poised to be a good one.
The next episode, “Witch of the Week”, written by Andrew Law and directed by Lucia Aniello, is the stronger of the two. They pair together nicely in that the first focuses on the mother/daughter relationship between Deborah and DJ and the second focuses on Ava’s own mother/daughter relationship. Yes, Ava’s unhinged mother (and therefore Jane Adams) is BACK on Hacks.
She wastes no time with her chaos, holding Ava up for work by telling her she has something quick she wants to talk to her about before saying: “I’m worried you’re not going to have children.” MY GOD. What is UP with moms of queer daughters being so obsessed with their fertility?
Winnie is pressuring Deborah to come up with a Carpool Karaoke-esque spin-off, yet another reminder that Deborah and Ava are at the whims of the network and making late night is more about business than it is about making a good show or doing good writing. This season has been, let’s just say, interesting to watch as a person who writes for a living. Not at all triggering. Not at all too real.
The episode also brings Mayor Jo back into the story, as the wild mayor of Las Vegas gets caught up in a sex scandal with a bunch of hockey players that makes her the butt of every late night joke. Ava proposes something different: Deborah should interview Mayor Jo on air in order to do something different and less hack than the rest of the jokes hosts are firing off.
On a side note, I’ve been watching a lot of films Lauren Weedman appears in. This started as a self-assigned project where I was watching every Alison Brie film, which led to watching all of Jeff Baena’s filmography, which led to more broadly exploring a lot of low-budget ensemble indie films I hadn’t seen before. And wow, Weedman is in a lot of them! She has had a really interesting and underrated career!
All of this to say: The casting on Hacks is so good. It’d be so easy for the series to coast by on the strengths of legend Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, whose talents have rocketed into the limelight thanks to this show. But Hacks‘ longevity relies on a fleshed out ensemble, and the series plays to all of these other actors’ strengths so well. I doubt, for example, any other show would know how to actually use Megan Stalter as well as she’s used here. Robby Hoffman, too. (Favorite quote of the episode: “She told me she’s a triple Scorpio, and I had to pretend I know what that means. I mean, I’m gay, but I’m no lesbian.”)
Speaking of Stalter, Kayla’s father tries to bribe her back to the family business. Jimmy has been having a rough season. Ava and Deborah never even told him they made up; he was bitten by a dog; his client with cancer is in remission but has fired him. At this point, I’m waiting for Jimmy to hit his breaking point.
After clips from the Mayor Jo interview go viral but it doesn’t impact episode ratings, Deborah and Ava propose a new strategy: What if they tape the show the day before it airs and release teaser clips on social media leading up to the episode? It’s a great idea, but again, it hits close to home for anyone who works in a creative field that relies on engagement. If I may step back and talk about myself and the website you’re reading this on for a moment: Nothing is more frustrating when we have a post pop off on social media but it doesn’t translate to people actually clicking on and reading the piece. So often, we’re forced to strategize around algorithms and restraints that don’t come from readers themselves but from the ways social media have retrained people to consume content. Deborah and Ava are contending with that on a much larger scale than our little gay website, but it’s all the same challenges and a lot of the same enemies, especially when it comes to AI, Google search algorithms, and social media. I don’t know what my point here is exactly except maybe: 1. Hacks deeply understands the harsh realities of being a creative/artist under capitalism and of working in media today and 2. There has never been a better time to become a paid member of Autostraddle. Shameless plug? Absolutely.
The strategy does work for them. They hit number one. It’s an especially sweet victory given that it follows Deborah and Ava making up and resolving to make the show they actually want to make.
The episode does drive the smallest of wedges back between Ava and Deborah though, as Ava looks suspiciously on at Deborah while taping the episode celebrating her number one spot. She’s right to be suspicious. Deborah had a direct hand in getting Winnie Landell fired. And even though Winnie wasn’t exactly an ally of Ava’s, if Ava does connect the dots here, it could make her distrust Deborah again, just another example of Deborah taking out petty personal gripes on others and treating other people as dispensable. It doesn’t matter that Winnie would have done the same. Ava wants to see Deborah is capable of change and that it’s possible to make it in this business without that approach.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
Photo of Amanda Tori Meating by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Human Rights Campaign
Tomorrow, RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16 contestant Amanda Tori Meating is hosting an all trans woman drag show called Dollapalooza at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn. Featuring Aja, Amethyst, Jasmine Kennedie, Dev Doe, and many more, the event aims to showcase the wide variety of drag from trans woman queens.
In anticipation of the event, I talked to Amanda about its origin, how her drag has changed since coming out, and the tricky nature of dysphoria.
Drew: Can you start by telling me how Dollapalooza came to be?
Amanda: A couple things happened within a short amount of time. I launched a GoFundMe for my FFS and I was expecting it to take way more time to meet the goal, but it only took like 13 hours. That was very, very unexpected, and it just got me thinking. Before launching it, I was already formulating a plan to produce an event that would just be a fundraiser show for me. Some of my drag sisters in Brooklyn have done similar things. But then it met the goal. And I was like, well, I could still produce something and it could benefit other bitches, you know? Because I was also very conscious of the fact that the only reason it happened so fast was because I was on RuPaul’s Drag Race. So I was like how can we spread the love to some of the girls who haven’t? And some of the boys who haven’t! It’s Dollapalooza and the cast is all trans women but for the fundraiser itself one of our DJs, DJ Tokyo, is halfway to her FFS GoFundMe and then Max Love, who is a transmasc drag king, is halfway to his GoFundMe for top surgery so we’re going to try and get them both some extra cash.
Drew: That’s great!
Amanda: I was also inspired by Standup NYC produced by Julie J which has raised so much money for so many different causes and has a similar show structure of a bunch of people doing one number with multiple sets. And then I was at Trish, Charlene Incarnate and Rify Royalty’s party at 3 Dollar Bill, a couple months ago when their guests were Maddelynn Hatter, Sasha Velour, Lexi Love, and Ivy Fischer who is hot and new on the Brooklyn scene, she just moved here from Atlanta. It felt like a Dollapalooza to me! I was just like wow dolls do it best. So I was like okay what if we did this little fundraiser moment and it was a massive cast at 3 Dollar Bill of all trans women? How sickening and cunt would that be?
Drew: I started writing about drag and Drag Race for Autostraddle at the end of 2020 and it was a bit of a fight. At the time, I wasn’t an editor, and the thought was that Drag Race was more gay male culture and I had to really sell this idea that it was queer women culture too and actually a lot of the queens had since transitioned. The cultural understanding — in part because of Drag Race — was still very much that drag queens were gay men dressed like women. But over the last five years, so many of the most famous queens are now trans women.
How do you feel like that shift has changed drag and people’s understanding of drag?
Amanda: I actually don’t know if it’s really changed a whole lot in terms of most people’s understanding of drag.
Drew: Oh interesting!
Amanda: I think a lot of people still have very narrow understandings of what drag is and who can do drag. It is quite interesting to me. I definitely think with the coronation of Mother Sasha Colby there certainly has been some shift. You always notice the trends in drag and I feel like there was a very solid move toward oh baby we’re giving human hair, we’re giving body, we’re giving trans womana gorgeousness and I certainly think that has a lot to do with her. But at the same time that’s not the only kind of drag that you could see from a trans woman.
Drew: Totally.
Amanda: I wanted this lineup to give a really broad scope of drag. Like this entire cast is dolls but on stage you might see Creature from the Black Lagoon. You never know.
Drew: How has your personal relationship to drag changed since coming out as a trans woman?
Amanda: Oh my God like so much. Before I came to the realization that I was full-time woman, when I was more serving nonbinary fierceness, I think drag was a vehicle to experience gender euphoria without knowing that’s what I was doing. Whereas now I’m very conscious of the fact that that’s what I’m doing.
For me, since coming out, drag has felt less about artistic expression and more just dolling myself up, if you will, to feel my outsides represent the woman on the inside. Whereas before, when I hadn’t accepted the fact that I’m a woman, drag was more of a canvas to be kooky crazy clown spookiness. Which is something I still have so much love for and artistically gravitate toward. But it’s interesting to me since coming out how I’ve used drag as a way to show myself what we’re all going for — me and the girl in the mirror.
Drew: I love that perspective. Because I feel like the narrative that is commonly shared is that before transitioning drag was the space to be a woman and post-coming out drag can be the kooky crazy. But something I know I experienced is once I’d accepted my womanhood, once I’d named that not just to the world but to myself, my dysphoria got so much worse.
Amanda: Exactly! Oh my God. I keep telling people that post-FFS the makeup is going to get crazy again. I’m going to want to— or at least I hope I’m going to want to be more clown-y with it, because I feel like now the makeup I do in drag is very much like I’m trying to affirm for myself what it’s going to look like after surge.
Drew: I also got FFS this year and the months leading up to it were so dysphoric. But now that it’s done and mostly healed the changes look so subtle to me? I’m like have I ever known what my face looks like?
Amanda: I think dysphoria is so interesting in that way because it almost makes you ignore the things that you don’t want to see sometimes? It either makes you ignore them or it makes you hyperaware of them.
Drew: Yes!
Amanda: You know? Which I think, if I’m talking specifically about my journey with makeup and my face and dysphoria and specifically with the brow bone, because I wasn’t on the same page as the woman within I wasn’t necessarily looking at the actual layout of my bones. Because I didn’t want to! Instead I was like oh I’m just going to paint a silly clown face over all of it.
Drew: Yeah, post-surgery I said to my partner that I didn’t think anything changed about my brow bone and they were like umm it has. And then I looked at old pictures and was like oh wow yeah! (laughs)
Amanda: (laughs)
Drew: Okay, the last thing I wanted to talk about is… I know you’re a theatre girl. Do you see your drag as a continuation of more traditional theatre or do they feel like separate artistic practices? And do you want to return to that other kind of performance?
Amanda: Yes and. I kind of feel like… well, when you say traditional theatre…
Drew: Right, like, what does that even mean? I guess I know that you were in Kinky Boots, I know you were in Angels in America. Basically, you have a BFA.
Amanda: The girls love to forget it!
Drew: (laughs) It’s tricky because so much of traditional theatre has drag in it and bar drag is still theatre, so I don’t think the line is clear. But I’m wondering for you if there is no line or if it does feel like there’s some divide.
Amanda: I mean, I definitely feel like post-Kinky Boots I was realizing things and I kind of came to the conclusion that the theatre world didn’t really have a space for me to exist authentically which is why I sort of walked away from theatre and into drag. But I do have a BFA and I definitely miss that kind of theatre, so I could see myself getting back in the saddle.
Having come out, and especially once I’ve had FFS this summer, I see a future in which I would be able to walk into a room full of people and introduce myself to them without feeling like I’m lying. Gag on it.
Dollapalooza is tomorrow at 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn. Get tickets now.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
I don’t think I need to tell you life feels extremely difficult right now. LGBTQ+ lives — especially trans lives — are under attack at every level of the government and by pervasive and insidious societal programming attempting to erase and demonize queer and trans identities. Shit’s rough! Queer community building feels not only like a balm but like an imperative. If you’re struggling to find your queer community or just looking for other avenues for deep connection, our team shares our own approaches and the unexpected places where you can not just survive but thrive. From queer sports leagues to dinner parties to craft groups to martial arts to simply calling the people already in your life, there are so many ways to nurture queer community in your everyday life. Share how you’re finding or taking care of your queer family in the comments!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
The vast majority of clients for sex workers of any gender has always been, as I’m sure you can imagine, men — but, if you believe the trendpieces, over the last several years there’s been a slow but steady rise of women also patronizing escorts or dominatrixes or booking their very own sensual massage. The conversation around why women aren’t typical clients and what motivates them to take the plunge can feel a little gender essentialist, but it’s also really sociologically fascinating. As a former sex worker who came into my queerness while working in the industry, it’s actually one of my favorite conversations to have.
Which is just to say that I adored speaking to queer Amsterdam-based luxury escort Charlie Levine about that topic and so many others. In the Netherlands, sex work is legalized, and she’s been doing this work since she was 21, starting out at an agency before eventually going independent. She describes herself on her website as a long-legged brunette, doe-eyed with velvet skin, bee-stung lips and timeless charm, a fan of Virginia Woolf and Bladerunner, saunas and Nobuyoshi Araki, open to clients of all genders and sexualities.And lately, more and more of her clients haven’t been cis men.
We talked about a million things on our zoom call, but this interview has been edited for length and clarity.To protect her identity and her life outside of work, Charlie’s real name, identifying details and face have been obscured.
Riese: Okay, so — let’s start at the start. What made you interested in becoming a sex worker?
Charlie: I think I’ve always had this fascination with sex work — an almost gravitational pull towards it. We get these messages about purity, about either Madonnas or whores, and I think I was quite struck by that dichotomy — I latched onto that from a very young age. And throughout the ages some of the freest women had been courtesans, and I was so drawn to them. Could I do this work? What would it be like? Before I started, I used to fantasize about inviting an escort over. On a deeper level, I wanted to know a version of myself that I couldn’t really access otherwise. It’s strange. I never really know why I started. Of course, money was also a big motivator.
Riese: Right — for me, it was money first and foremost, but also I’d been curious about sex work for a long while. Did you know you were queer when you started?
Charlie: I did. I think I knew relatively young, around the age of 15, that I was into girls as well. But it took a long time to come to terms with what that means and to explore that side of myself.
Riese: So when you first started out, you worked with an agency?
Charlie: Yes. After years and years of reading about sex work, thinking about it and building these hypotheticals in my mind, I interviewed with one of the so-called “high end” agencies. I saw it as an experiment, not thinking I’d really start working for them. Before I knew it, I had my first booking.
I do still remember that very first booking, and how nervous I was. I was sitting on the couch in a hotel with a glass of wine in my hands shaking a little bit. Not from nerves about what I was going to do — but this idea that once I do this, I can’t go back. That was scary. But then — it wasn’t actually that hard. It was quite easy. And fun!
Riese: Did he know it was your first booking?
Charlie: I think he knew, yeah. He also immediately proposed marriage and asked me to have his child. Then after we had sex he fell asleep.
Riese: Oh, wow. That’s nice.
Charlie: And I didn’t know what to do! I was like, time is ticking?
Riese: So the agency that you worked for, did specifically outcall1 full service2, basically?
Charlie: Yeah. Outcall full service, with a two-hour minimum booking time, so more of an “experience.” We’d usually have clients that wanted something beyond just the sexual aspect. We’d often have dinner together, or I’d accompany them to a social event, a concert, the ballet, that kind of thing. Some would book us for multiple nights, or for company on a multi-city-trip. I’d join a group of girls for a bachelor party in Ibiza, then be off to a jazz bar in Paris. I was often someone’s girlfriend at a work function. I was once taken to a Sheryl Crow concert and she is, by the way, very hot. That’s fun. I’ve been thrown into all these different types of social situations and environments I’ve had to learn how to navigate.
Riese: So you felt like it was a good fit for you from the start?
Charlie: It came so easily. I really enjoyed that intimacy and that space that you create with another person. It’s isolated from the rest of the world — as if suspended in space and time, even. You get to know each other quite well in that space.
Riese: How long did you stay working with an agency?
Charlie: Quite long! Probably too long. They were fine, comparatively, but agencies in general, especially in the Netherlands, have their discontents — I didn’t really feel like I could express myself fully, because they’d still always have the final say about my image. Like, over-the-knee boots weren’t allowed and stockings – which always seem to tear after only one wear – were always mandatory. We were supposed to invest in high-end lingerie and luxury brand clothing at our own expense.
They were representing us, so they got to call the shots. They’d determine our rate, offer discounted multi-hour ‘packages’ without our consent, and take 40% of our earnings. Because of the different tax structures and possible deductions for agencies and individual workers in the Netherlands, that meant that in the end they would effectively earn more from a booking than you did. Also, they were always a little mysterious about their ‘secret’ screening and verification methods, but I later learned that those entailed next to nothing. All that is to say: agencies have quite a lot of power in the Netherlands, and if you’re hiring someone from an agency, make sure to tip.
Riese: Yeah our screening was so intense, but I think that’s ‘cause it’s illegal in the U.S. It’s legal in the Netherlands, right?
Charlie: It’s legalized, but that means it’s also regulated, and working is conditional upon a lot of intrusive rules supposedly there for our own good. I think the only desirable framework is full decriminalization, which entails removing all regulations that criminalize or penalize sex work. Because legalization actually ends up worsening the general working conditions and safety of the industry for most, especially for those who are already marginalized and who end up being pushed into the margins even further. Street sex work is largely outlawed, and there’s an increasingly limited number of spaces where sex workers can work. Different cities have different regulations, and it’s almost impossible to work independently. Because the conditions to work licensed are very difficult to meet, a lot of sex workers end up working unlicensed and have difficulties accessing and trusting institutions such as banks, police and health care. To different degrees, the fact that the government, as well as the local municipalities, get to determine the conditions for working as a sex worker really affects all workers.
“The threesome was the medium through which she could explore her queerness, in a way that she might otherwise not have been able to. Those were very fun.”
Riese: How does your queerness impact how you approach your sex work?
Charlie: From more of a community perspective, I see sort of the queer community and sex worker community as very intertwined. We’re both always fighting for recognition, for safety, for bodily autonomy. And I think as a queer sex worker, that’s doubly important to me.
In terms of my personal life — when I started working with the agency, I wasn’t really able to put as much of my queerness into my work, or to advertise that I would want to see women clients. When I went independent, I wanted to be open about it, and now I’m happy that it’s explicitly a part of what I do, seeing clients across the entire gender spectrum. But I’ve recently really also seen an uptick in women clients, which is really cool.
Riese: Did you ever see women clients when you were with the agency?
Charlie: Yes, but never by themselves. I saw some couples. I still do. They’re actually my favorite thing to do, because it’s so challenging and complicated and exciting to navigate those dynamics. There are two people who relate to each other in a certain way, and as their guest for the night, I have to navigate all that.
When I was with the agency, I always got recommended for couple-clients because I’d make sure the woman was at ease. Sometimes it’d be difficult, you’d notice the woman was mostly doing it for her partner, not out of her own desire. Sometimes you feel like it’s something they’re sharing together, they’re really in love, and they want to explore. Then other times you definitely get the sense you were hired because of her.
Riese: Interesting! Like because she wanted to explore her own bisexuality?
Charlie: Yeah. The threesome was the medium through which she could explore her queerness, in a way that she might otherwise not have been able to. Those were very fun.
Riese: Yeah I imagine — if you think about all the potential clients you could see, a threesome situation where the woman wanted to explore her queerness sounds like a top tier booking.
Charlie: Yes! Once I had a couple who booked me — or actually the woman booked me — and I was supposedly a surprise for her husband. He wasn’t allowed to touch me at all. And she just had her way with me!
Riese: Did he like it?
Charlie: I think so, yeah! It was hilarious. It was really fun with her — but I was like, oh this is not for him.
Riese: Were there couples that you’d see multiple times, that you’d have as repeat clients?
Charlie: Yeah, definitely. There’s been a few couples that really treated me as their secret girlfriend, and who I got to know much better and more intimately. And because you really can make real lasting, and genuine connections, through this work, and especially when you’re allowed to be part of someone’s intimate life, as a couple, that’s a really special role to have, I think, when it goes well. But again, it’s a fine line.
Women are so socialized — successfully or not —to be objects of desire, not subjects of desire, on a sexual marketplace. And that’s really hard to navigate, if you’re positioned like that, or to take up that role of the one who is pursuing their desire.
Riese: We really never had female clients at the two massage parlors where I worked — so I only ever saw one woman client.
So the first place I worked had a lot of queer girls working there, but the second one, when I first started there, didn’t. So, my boss called me on my day off and she was like, “hey we have a regular who wants to come in with his friend and his wife, and wants the three of them to be seen by different girls at the same time. Could you come in today and see the wife?” And I was like, “Absolutely. I’ve been waiting all my life for this phone call. I will be there!” And I was so excited, it was great, it was wonderful, fantastic happy ending.
First of all though, this guy, he didn’t tell her what was going on! We talked about her family, her kids, how she’d moved to the U.S. to be with her husband. Anyhow, she caught on quickly but initially he hadn’t told her what type of massage it was.
Charlie: Oh my God.
Riese: Right? But okay, so I always had theories about why there were no female clients, and then I want to hear yours too!
Which number one, obviously money.
And then number two — and this was specific to the type of work I did, different from what you do — since ours was like, you get a massage and then a hand job, with very defined boundaries around what type of physical intimacy was against the rules, it was just a more straightforward event for a man, and a service that I think people associate with cis men. Sometimes, women can be more complicated in terms of what gets them off.
But then — number three, and this was something I didn’t realize the extent of until I became a sex worker, is that it’s a social thing. Men talk to each other, they bring each other to certain sex workers. Not just their friends — their co-workers, too. We’d often see multiple men who worked at the same firm, the same hedge fund, whatever. Most new clients were accepted as referrals from existing clients. I didn’t know that men spoke to colleagues so openly about seeing sex workers. Women just aren’t in that world. So those were my theories, but what are yours?
Charlie: The sort of social interaction between men about sex workers was also really new to me. I never knew that this is how some men get acquainted with sex workers, and different places to go. So I definitely think that there’s something to that, right? That there’s not that much of a social network, to have access to sex work, or even to feel that it is an option.
Riese: Right. Like I knew men went to strip clubs with clients, obviously, or maybe to brothels with friends on vacation. But the like — “I’m bringing a guy we’re recruiting to our company, I’m gonna bring him here to get a hand job,” basically? Okay! That’s fascinating to me. I don’t think women are doing that at all. Certainly not in the business world.
Charlie: And there’s no shame about it. It’s very interesting. I’ve even had men book me and another colleague, and basically have dinner for four first, and then go to adjacent rooms, share that experience with each other. That’s probably a little different for women.
I’ve given this a lot of thought as well, because I do actually see single women now, which I’m super happy about — but I think for a lot of women it’s not just the financial barriers, but even those who can afford it, there’s a symbolic barrier. Women are so socialized — successfully or not —to be objects of desire, not subjects of desire, on a sexual marketplace. And that’s really hard to navigate, if you’re positioned like that, or to take up that role of the one who is pursuing their desires.
Charlie: Exactly. I think that might be actually one of the biggest obstacles. I can sense that with women clients, that they’re uncomfortable taking up that role. It’s almost as if it gives some gender trouble, right?
Riese: For sure.
Charlie: In terms of roles that are laid out for us.
Riese: Absolutely. Because obviously we know men feel entitled to sex, right? They’re mostly one hundred percent chill about hiring sex workers. I can imagine with women, they’re being a little bit more like, am I allowed to do this? Is this okay for me to want this?
Charlie: Exactly. I always hope that women will start allowing themselves this a little bit more. It’s so interesting though, because once you wrap sexual services up in a not-so-explicitly sexual or even spiritual story of self care — it’s a yoni massage, it’s something wellness-adjacent — then suddenly it seems to become easier to act on those desires. But when a service is also explicitly sexual, the barrier seems to be a lot higher still.
Riese: Do you feel like those attitudes are changing? What do you think is driving what you’re seeing, in terms of an uptick of female clients?
Charlie: It’s hard to say. For me, it’s probably a lot of my own marketing. But I also get the sense that it’s being talked about more amongst women and queer people. Perhaps it also relates to the general change in some circles, when it comes to views around sex work. I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about how kind of a shift has occurred in certain circles, when it comes to almost normalizing sex work, a little bit.
Riese: Right, there used to be such stigma around it that I usually kept my own past a secret, but now I’m pretty open about it.
Charlie: A few years back, I suddenly noticed — I feel like the shame is gone, and therefore I also just kind of want to tell everyone, like I’m proud of what I do, and I think I’m pretty good at it.
Riese: Amongst the women that you see, do you see many who aren’t exploring or in a couple, but are just lesbians who want to hire a sex worker the same way a straight man would?
Charlie: I’ve definitely seen an uptick personally, and some colleagues of mine as well, in just women who know that they’re queer, but have difficulty finding time to date, because dating is exhausting, and queer dating especially. They’re just like, I just want to have time with someone who I’m attracted to, and spend a nice evening that’s sensual, but also fun. And that has been really nice to see.
Riese: I’d love a world where there was more of that. Men are so comfortable with wanting a completely no-strings-attached nice, sexy evening with somebody. But non-men deserve that too!
Charlie: Absolutely. That’s a type of self-care as well! Yeah. I always feel like I wish more women would feel they could take up that space. But also my clients tell me that it’s hard to find, for instance, escorts that are actually queer, or bisexual, or a lesbian. A lot of the branch is still catering towards men. Some of them even charge more—
Riese: For women?
Charlie: Yes! Which I find unimaginable. But many women don’t know this experience exists.
Riese: I saw on your website that you offer special rates for women.
Charlie: I just want to give women an extra push to take the leap!
Most colleagues I met and worked with at the agency weren’t actually bisexual outside of work, but were very happy to work together with another colleague. And I mean, who wouldn’t be?
Riese: So, out of curiosity I poked around some agency website in the Netherlands and the first one I landed on —in the preview images they had for each escort there was an overlay of the basic details —name, physical characteristics, and then whether they were bisexual, bicurious, heteroflexible or heterosexual —but only one person put heterosexual, they mostly said “bisexual.” And “Lesbian Experience” is listed as one of the services offered, but they also have a lot there about threesomes, seeing couples, and so forth. Have agencies always put that information so front-and-center or do you think that’s a reflection of what you’ve been seeing also in terms of a rise of people looking for those experiences? Or is it just that men find the idea of a woman being bisexual titillating?
Charlie: Ah, a “lesbian experience” now? Interesting. Yes, they must be trying to jump on the bandwagon indeed! That might really be a reflection of a higher demand.
The rest of what you’re seeing, though, especially the stated sexual orientations, is really not primarily directed at women I think. And you’re right, the idea of a bisexual companion is probably titillating to men, and, more importantly I think, an expression of willingness to do a duo booking with another provider. Most colleagues I met and worked with at the agency weren’t actually bisexual outside of work, but were very happy to work together with another colleague. And I mean, who wouldn’t be? There’s nothing wrong with that. Although I did once have a duo booking with another woman who almost seemed appalled by any girl-on-girl ‘action’ with me – can’t say I wasn’t a tiny bit startled by that!
Riese: Yeah — for me, depending on the client and the other girl and her sexuality and our relationship with each other, what we’d do in front of the client ranged from like, flirting and touching, to actually having (or pretending to have) full-blown sex with each other in front of him. There was one girl I often shared a shift with who was very straight and even a little homophobic, and when we were booked a double I remember feeling super uncomfortable around how to approach it with her! Because for most of the rest of us, booking a double was like the ultimate score, where we were gonna get paid to make out with each other. And for her it was not.
Anyhow — I like how you mentioned it as wrapped up in self-care, that’s an interesting framework to think about it within. Is it different for you with female clients in terms of intimacy? Like is it harder to keep that distance?
Charlie: Yeah, I have talked to queer colleagues who’ve said it’s harder to keep boundaries in place with other women. I find myself hoping more that she had a nice experience ‘cause I can understand the stigma and the barriers to being a woman who hires a sex worker. Another thing that’s also a little bit different, is that I think with men, the social roles are often quite set in stone, whereas with queer women, sometimes — you never know who’s gonna open the door, who’s gonna initiate?
Riese: How does that process go in the beginning with a female client who might be exploring — is it any different than you would with a male client? How do role negotiations happen in the moment — do you talk about stuff like topping or bottoming?
Charlie: Oh, it’s hard to make generalizations! I’d say in general, when I notice someone is entering unknown territory, I try to have a conversation about how they can tell me when something feels right, or doesn’t, and I try to take off the pressure of anything in particular needing to happen. I think the fact that I’m used to having less goal-oriented sex in my private life, may help in taking off the pressure to perform. With stuff like topping or bottoming, that really depends, but most of the time these topics surface quite naturally, either verbally or, well, in bed. What I have noticed is that women clients are generally way more cognizant of the need for enthusiastic consent, not just theirs, but also mine. Case in point: I once had a threesome with a lovely couple, and, in the heat of the moment, right as he was making moves to enter me, she abruptly stopped him, “Did you already ask Charlie whether she’d like that?” and then she proceeded to ask me, too. That was honestly such a powerful moment. Never underestimate the joy of getting to say ‘yes’!
Riese: I love that. Do the women who see you, are you usually the first time they’ve seen a sex worker, or have they seen others?
Charlie: I have yet to come across the woman for whom I’m not the first.
Riese: Oh, wow. That’s interesting.
Charlie: Although, no, I’ve seen women who had seen a woman in the context of a couple before. Sometimes that can also be sort of the gateway drug.
Riese: So they’d come after that relationship ended, or just come alone while it was still happening?
Charlie: I’ve had one woman who came to see me who was given that space by her husband to come see me, and that was really lovely. In general, I have the feeling that, in terms of keeping things secret from a partner, that’s something that women do less of. Colleagues of mine also said, “yeah, I love getting the lesbian clients, but once they get a girlfriend, it’s over.”
Riese: Right, that was also interesting for me as a worker, like the girls I worked with who had girlfriends told their partners, the girls who had boyfriends didn’t. And the majority of the clients we saw were straight married men.
Charlie: Yeah. Majority of mine are too.
Riese: I preferred that honestly, usually, because the single ones were more likely to get attached, in a way that married clients didn’t, you know? But do you ever see female couples?
Charlie: No! But if someone could hear me in this universe —that would be my dream. I would love that.
Riese: Is there anything you’d want to say to women who are considering hiring a sex worker?
Charlie: Do some research, hire someone working independently. Also don’t be afraid to give it a try, because I think doing this kind of service allows you to explore different sides of yourself that you might not have had the chance to explore fully. Just take the leap! Call me!
Riese: Is it ever hard to compartmentalize, in terms of your personal life and your work life, especially when you’re seeing women clients?
Charlie: When I started, I was 21, I really compartmentalized a lot. But going independent and growing, I’m shedding those layers of shame around what I’m doing, I’m really enjoying it, I know I’m really good at it. I’m compartmentalizing much less now. It shows in my work persona — that’s not an entirely different character very far away from me, but more a matter of highlighting different parts of who I am. It makes everything more integrated.
I think women who do this work in general are very interesting and worldly people. I love my colleagues. I think we should live in a world where we could put this on our CV, for anything, and it would be considered something praiseworthy.
Riese: It should be! It’s a lot of work!
Charlie: It’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of social insight, and it’s a lot of intersubjective challenges — being able to see what might be needed, or what someone might want, or being able to feel around what’s right in certain situations. It doesn’t come easy for everyone.
Riese: Yeah, the social aspect was hard for me, it took time. But a big aspect of where I worked was the community I started building with the girls I worked with — which I imagine was much easier for us to do because our place was incall. Did you know the other girls who worked at your agency? Did you start to build a community of sex workers back then?
Charlie: A little bit. I know that it really differs per agency, there’s some agencies that won’t even allow their workers to be in touch with each other —obviously, workers who are in touch with each other can fight for more rights, or better treatment, et cetera. But at my agency it wasn’t discouraged. So I did get in touch with some other workers and we’d sometimes meet each other for duo bookings, which was nice. But now that I’m independent, I’ve created a more supportive network.
Riese: How did you find and connect with other sex workers as an independent sex worker?
Charlie: Obsessive stanning through our socials, for the most part! Also I tour quite a bit so it’s easy to connect with colleagues and ask them out for coffee. Sometimes it’s also a client that connects us, for instance through a duo booking. No better introduction than a steamy threesome, really.
Riese: Yes! Did you find that there were lots of other queer sex workers out there?
Charlie: I’ve gotten to know many more now, I think we send each other small clandestine signals and queer references on our timelines, and generally pick up on those quite quickly, regardless of whether our ‘client-facing’ profiles explicitly cater to a queer audience or not. There were also quite a few at the agency — I wouldn’t say the majority, though, for this kind of sex work. But I’ve heard that, for instance, with burlesque dancers — the majority of them are queer.
Riese: Queer people are always trying to get you to go to a burlesque show.
Charlie: Right?
1“Outcall” means the booking does not take place in a set location that the sex worker operates out of, like an brothel or massage parlor (that’s “incall”), but instead happens in a different chosen location, like a hotel or someone’s apartment.
2“Full service” is sex worker language for actual sexual intercourse.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Hoooly crap, this interview is fantastic!!! Loved all the brilliant insights from both Riese and Charlie. I checked out Charlie’s website too and was intensely charmed by all of her writing. 10/10 this made me so happy to be a paid subscriber!
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This was so fascinating, thank you both – Charlie for agreeing to be interviewed and Riese for giving this interview to AS readers!
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have read this interview no less than 3 times! thank you to both Charlie and Riese for the candid conversation
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Thanks for the peek into this world. Hoping Charlie finds the F/F client couple of her dreams.
On May 16th, the WNBA kicks off its 29th season. Opening day features three games: Brittney Sykes and the Mystics play host to Brittney Griner and the Atlanta Dream, the Dallas Wings test out their new lineup against the reigning Commissioner’s Cup Champions, the Minnesota Lynx, and, in the nightcap, the first-ever regular season game for the Golden State Valkyries, as they welcome future in-state rivals, the Los Angeles Sparks, to the Bay Area.
I honestly can’t wait. I want to see what Karl Smesko’s offense looks like and how BG figures into his plans. I can’t wait for Minnesota to put Dallas through their paces and give us our first real assessment on where the Wings are in terms of development. I’m looking forward to hearing the roar of the Chase Center crowd. Golden State’s pre-season games have been electric, I can only imagine what tomorrow will be like.
But that’s tomorrow. Today, I’m just nervous. Ahead of the start of the WNBA season, teams have to finalize their rosters by cutting down their training camp rosters to 11 or 12 players, so I’ll spend the day refreshing the WNBA transactions page for the latest information. Cuts at this stage are hardly ever about talent; instead it’s just the fun of the pre-season giving way to the serious reality of the business of basketball. We’ve already seen some cuts — Bree Hall in Indiana, Serena Sundell in Seattle, Shyanne Sellers in Atlanta, Laeticia Amihere in Golden State, and Deja Kelly in Las Vegas — and more will come today; it never gets easier to see players have their dreams deferred. I’ll keep reminding myself that this is a pause not a period for those players who get cut: maybe they’ll get picked up by another WNBA team or maybe they’ll get a temporary contract during the season or maybe they’ll play overseas for a year and contend for a spot in Portland or Toronto next season. I’ll keep reminding myself but, still, today’s going to hurt.
As I await the fate of my favorite college players, I’ve got the second half of our WNBA Preview. Yesterday, we looked at the teams in the Eastern Conference and today we head out West to check the landscape of some drastically different rosters. I’m breaking down offenses, I’m looking at holes in coaching strategies and, of course, I’m answering the most important question of the WNBA season: who all’s gay here? (WAGH). Plus, if you want to be able to sound like you know what you’re talking about without going deep into the basketball nerdery, check out TL;DR.
When the Dallas Wings won the 2025 draft lottery, their star Arike Ogunbowale was elated; she tweeted, “I just fell to my knees. THANK YOU LORD!” Her reaction was understandable: with her teammates hampered by injuries, Ogunbowale had been forced to do it all in Dallas. She’s was the team’s #1 scoring option, the team’s top perimeter defender, the Wings’ floor general and despite her best effort, the team lost, a lot. But now, armed with the #1 draft pick — the Wings’ first since 2021 — Ogunbowale would finally get the help she needed.
But the Wings’ front office wasn’t content to just add this #1 pick to a broken infrastructure: they cleaned house. They got a new General Manager, veteran WNBA head coach, Curt Miller, and new head coach, Chris Koclanes, a former assistant at the University of Southern California and the Connecticut Sun. They dealt most of their line-up, returning only three players (Ogunbowale, Teaira McCowan and Maddy Siegrist) from last year’s roster. They reloaded in free agency, picking up Dijonai Carrington and Ty Harris from Connecticut, NaLyssa Smith from Indiana, Myisha Hines-Allen from Minnesota, and Kiki Herbert-Harrigan from Phoenix. It was an entire new squad…and then, in April, they added more youth, led by the #1 pick, Paige Bueckers.
Drafts are usually a trade-off between what a team needs and the best available player but in Bueckers, the Wings got both. Dallas has desperately needed a consistent point guard for years and never seemed to make it a priority. Bueckers brings great floor vision and a willingness to share the ball but, if circumstances require it, she’s also capable of getting her own shot. She is, by all accounts, a great teammate and a good communicator and those traits will only help foster the kind of culture Koclanes is looking to build. I do worry a bit about asking Bueckers to do too much too soon; in addition to adjusting to the physicality and speed of the WNBA, she’s coming off what’s surely an exhausting collegiate championship run. Hopefully Koclanes will rotate Bueckers and Harris at the point guard slot to ensure that her legs stay fresh.
Beyond Bueckers, I love the rookies that the Wings have brought in and how they serve as nice compliments to the team’s veteran players. Aziaha James brings the same type of tenacity as Ogunbowale; both have shown the capacity to be microwave scorers, getting buckets in bunches. JJ Quinerly gives you the similar defensive intensity as Carrington, capable of being lockdown defenders on whomever their opponent’s best perimeter player is. I love all these guards and the depth they bring to Dallas.
I’m less enthusiastic about what the Wings have going on in the post. It’s an odd worry to have, given that that the Wings’ former head coach Latricia Trammel used to stack bigs like chips but now the cupboard in Dallas is bare. Part of me understands why Dallas would opt to keep McCowan — how many 6’7″ bigs are out there, after all — but her performances have been inconsistent, particularly against the top teams in the league. One game, McCowan might give Dallas a double-double, the next she might only collect one rebound. Hopefully, a steady rotation of help from Siegrist, Smith, and Hines-Allen will help McCowan establish some consistency.
TL;DR: The Dallas Wings’ moves during free agency and during the WNBA draft put them solidly back in the playoff race. But in order to take full advantage of Dallas’ backcourt combo of Arike Ogunbowale and Paige Bueckers, their front court is going to have to step up.
Heading into Game 4 of the 2023 WNBA Finals, the Las Vegas Aces were without the services of two of their starters, Chelsea Gray and Kiah Stokes, so Becky Hammon — aided by future Valkyries head coach, Natalie Nakase — is forced to turn to her bench. She tapped Sydney Colson to sub in and lock down the Liberty’s perimeter players. Colson was great: she clamped down on defense and, at one point, delivered a jaw-dropping behind-the-back pass to a cutting Alysha Clark. She helped the Aces get the W and became the unlikely hero of that championship run. Afterwards, people are stunned that Colson was capable of that, everyone assumed she was just on the team for vibes. But then The Face of the League stepped up and reminded fans: just because she isn’t playing doesn’t mean she can’t play. She could always ball, it’s just that she’s playing behind players that are future Hall of Famers.
I mention that because that’s what excites me most about watching inaugural season of the Golden State Valkyries: seeing players who have been stuck behind the starters finally getting a chance to shine. Temi Fagbenle, Tiffany Hayes, and Kayla Thornton have all been strong sixth woman contributors and now they get a chance to move into the starting lineup and showcase what they’re capable of. Those kinds of stories and the sheer excitement in the Bay Area for this team is going to make this Valkyries’ season fun to watch.
That said, I must admit that I’m a little perplexed by Golden State’s roster. When the team was announced, owner Joe Lacob set an ambitious goal: the Valkyries would win a championship in five years. If Golden State has any hopes of accomplishing that, they needed to be active in free agency and they just weren’t. Maybe they’re waiting until the new collective bargaining agreement is formalized to really build through free agency but it feels like a lost year in the five year plan. Even their first draft pick, Justė Jocytė, feels like a loss: she may not come over this season at all, opting instead to stay overseas and focus on EuroBasket. The Valkyries cut all three of their other draft picks, including both leading scorers from their pre-season games, Laeticia Amihere and Migna Toure. It’s non-sensical; granted, the Valkyries aren’t competing for anything other a lottery pick but, still, it’s hard to imagine building a culture without your star draft pick.
TL;DR: In their inaugural season, the Valkyries will focus less on winning and more on building a foundation for a future successful franchise. This summer will be full of historic moments for the WNBA’s new franchise and offer a blueprint for forthcoming franchises in Portland and Toronto.
Last year, it felt like everyone’s long-held concerns about the Las Vegas Aces, mine included, finally came to fruition. The impact of years of having a limited bench and forcing their starters to play excessive minutes took its toll. Past coaching decisions prolonged Chelsea Gray‘s recovery from her 2023 injury which shifted responsibilities to Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum, primarily, and it all became too much. Now, did the Aces make the playoffs? Yes. Did the Aces advance to the semifinals? Also, yes, but that’s just what happens when one team has A’ja Wilson — who was playing otherworldly, MVP-level basketball — and the other team doesn’t.
For nearly every other team in the W, the Aces’ season would’ve been an acceptable result but for Las Vegas, who seemed on the verge of a dynasty and who have to take full advantage of Wilson’s prime, it was a sign that change was needed. Their big off-season move was being part of the 3-way trade that sent Kelsey Plum — who’d been part of this team since they were the San Antonio Stars — to Los Angeles and brought Jewell Loyd from Seattle. The team would also lose Kate Martin in the expansion draft and Alysha Clark, Tiffany Hayes, and Sydney Colson in free agency. With the Aces’ already short bench getting even shorter, the team hit the free agent market themselves, bringing in Dana Evans, Tiffany Mitchell, and Cheyenne Parker-Tyus (who will miss part of the season due to pregnancy). Add to that some interesting prospects in training camp and, maybe, the Aces have learned their lesson.
Or maybe not. I remain skeptical of the Plum for Loyd swap. To be sure, Loyd is an incredible talent with the ability to stuff a stat sheet but Plum is, by far, the more efficient scorer. Perhaps now that Loyd is no longer her team’s first scoring option, she can get the shots she wants and improve her efficiency. I’m also skeptical that the additions to the bench…actually, let me correct that: I think the biggest impediment to the Aces’ efforts to building a supporting cast is Becky Hammon. She is so overly invested in the core that she’s not giving young talent the opportunity to develop and then she wonders why she can’t depend on her bench when it counts. Just watching her substitution patterns during the preseason — why is A’ja Wilson playing when the Aces are up 20+ — have me doubting that Hammon learned anything from last season.
(You know what would help solve some of these issues? A general manager. You know what the Aces haven’t had since November? A general manager.)
That said, two things really excite me about the Aces this season: first, Chelsea Gray is back in her bag. It took longer than expected but Gray’s performance at Unrivaled, particularly in the playoffs, showed us that the Point Gawd still lives. The Aces are championship contenders when Gray is at her best. And second, of course, is seeing A’ja Wilson do A’ja Wilson things. We’re watching a player make a case for being the GOAT in real time, we should all savor it.
TL;DR: With Jewell Loyd stepping into Las Vegas’ core four, the Aces come into this season looking to recapture past magic. Having Chelsea Gray back at full strength should bolster the Aces’ hopes of being championship contenders but the team’s lack of depth (still!) could come back to bite them.
For years since losing Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray, the Los Angeles Sparks have been slowly wilting: refusing to accept that they needed to undergo a full rebuild. Instead, the Sparks would just bring in role players who, when combined with All-Stars like Nneka Ogwumike and Dearica Hamby, might put the team in playoff contention (spoiler alert: it didn’t work!). But Curt Miller’s arrival in Los Angeles in 2023 seemed to signal that the franchise was finally embracing reality and realizing that they needed to rebuild through the draft. The Sparks began that process last year, securing Cameron Brink and Rickea Jackson in the draft. The team’s rebuild was stymied a bit by Brink’s injury but the process was working: Jackson was getting playing time and developing in Miller’s system and the franchise secured the #2 pick in the draft.
Then, seemingly, the Sparks’ front office got impatient and shifted the team back to a “win now” mindset. To that end, they were part of the three-way trade with Las Vegas and Seattle that won them Kelsey Plum and sent the #2 pick and Li Yueru to the Storm. In some ways, the move made sense: the Sparks are without a 2026 first round draft pick so there’s nothing to be gained by not making the playoffs. But, at the same time, passing over a generational talent like Dominique Malonga or even a point guard of the future in Olivia Miles (though she ultimately decided to return to college) was a risky proposition, especially for a player entering her eighth season in the league.
That said, Plum is a walking bucket: she can hit a smooth jumper from the outside or drive to the basket and score in traffic. KP can handle the ball and has great court vision but I think she’s better when she’s playing off ball so I’m anxious to see what she and Julie Allemand look like as a backcourt duo, once Allemand recovers from surgery. Plum used to share the floor with Hamby in Las Vegas — to great effect — so I’m hoping they can recapture some of their past chemistry this season. Those two have to play well and be strong leaders in the locker room, in order for the Sparks to have any chance at the post-season.
Like her counterparts, Karl Smesko and Nate Tibbetts, the Sparks new head coach, Lynne Roberts, prefers an offensive scheme that values the three point shot and layups… and I remain skeptical that it’ll work at this level. It just doesn’t make sense to me to mold professional players to a system, rather than building a system that best utilizes their talents. To be sure, I think there’s a better chance of that scheme being effective in Los Angeles than Atlanta or Phoenix because the Sparks has shooters like Plum and Allemand, rim runners like Hamby, and a big who can space the floor in Azurá Stevens. Even the rookies and newcomers the Sparks acquired in the off-season seem to fit. But what does Roberts do with a player like Jackson who thrives in the mid-range (much like to Kahleah Copper)? How do you work Brink back into the rotation under this system?
TL;DR: It’s playoffs or bust for the Los Angeles Sparks this year and, with the addition of Kelsey Plum, the franchise has a shot of getting there. With the rest of the league improving around them, the window is narrow for the Sparks. Much of the season’s hopes will hang on recapturing the on-court chemistry between Plum and Hamby from their Vegas days and maximizing the efficiency of Lynne Roberts’ offense.
In 2016, the Minnesota Lynx were on the verge of cementing themselves as a WNBA dynasty. The franchise had already won three championships with its hall-of-fame core but now were vying to do the improbable: win back-to-back championships in the WNBA for the first time since the Los Angeles Sparks did it in 2001/2002. The team rolled through the regular season, finishing atop the league standings and earning the overall #1 seed in the playoffs. Behind a dominant performance from Maya Moore, the Lynx would sweep past the Phoenix Mercury in their opening round playoff series and, fittingly perhaps, meet the aforementioned Sparks in the WNBA Finals. The match-up remains, in my view, the best playoff series in WNBA history.
The Sparks stole Game One on Minnesota’s home court — on an Alana Beard buzzer beater, no less — but the Lynx evened things up in Los Angeles, sending the series back to Minneapolis for a decisive Game 5. The lead volleyed back and forth between the two powerhouses and, ultimately, came down to the final seconds. Down one with about six seconds left, the Sparks’ Nneka Ogwumike collects back-to-back rebounds and then scores over the out-stretched hand of Minnesota’s Sylvia Fowles. The Sparks won, 77-76. After the game, Minnesota Head Coach Cheryl Reeves blasted the series’ officiating, including an earlier shot by Ogwumike that the WNBA would later admit came after the shot clock had expired. Feeling cheated out of a WNBA championship, the Lynx returned the next season with the same group of core players, and avenged their 2016 loss.
I mention all of that because, after getting a title “stolen” from them last season, the Lynx are coming into the 2025 with the same energy of that 2017 squad. It feels like this a team set on vengeance. We’ve gotten a taste of what that looks like already: Napheesa Collier came into Unrivaled with a massive chip on her shoulder following that WNBA Finals loss and she took her frustrations out on the entire roster. Phee has always been a great player — she won Defensive Player of the Year and finished second in last year’s MVP balloting — but her performance in Unrivaled was on a whole new level. If the rest of the Lynx come out with that same energy, Minnesota could certainly find themselves contending for a championship again this year.
But much like that 2017 team, the 2025 Minnesota Lynx return not having made substantial changes to their lineup. But with continuity comes chemistry and the Lynx will start the 2025 with a distinct advantage in that regard. Jessica Shepard returns to the Lynx after a season away from the league and should give Minnesota some post depth after losing Myisha Hines- Allen in free agency and Dorka Juhász opting for a season of rest. Newcomer Karlie Samuelson gives the team more depth on the perimeter and another three point shooting threat to pair alongside Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams.
TL;DR: The Minnesota Lynx return most of their lineup from last year’s run. Can the continuity and chemistry of their lineup help them capture the WNBA championship that eluded them? I’m hardpressed to bet against Napheesa Collier who, at least in Unrivaled, looked like the best player in the world.
I had, to put it mildly, some misgivings about Nate Tibbetts becoming the head coach of the Phoenix Mercury. For me, Tibbetts’ lack of exposure to the women’s game — his coaching experience was limited to the MNBA and G League — was disqualifying but I understood why it wasn’t for the Mercury’s front office. Two of the franchise’s three championships have been won by male coaches (Paul Westhead and Corey Gaines) with no prior coaching experience in the women’s game. They bolstered Tibetts with experienced assistants, some of the best facilities in the league, and a lineup overflowing with talent. To Tibbetts’ credit, the Mercury improved last year, winning 10 more games than they had the previous season.
But it wasn’t enough for the Phoenix front office — they wanted to compete for championships — so they blew up the team. Phoenix took to the free agent market and walked away with two of the most coveted entrants: perennial MVP candidate, Alyssa Thomas, and All-WNBA standout, Satou Sabally. The “win now” mentality came at a cost: the Mercury dealt much of their rotation — breaking some promises in the process — leaving Kahleah Copper as their only returning starter.
It’s hard to bet against an All-Star trio like Copper, Sabally, and Thomas but, if the success of the Liberty and Lynx taught us anything last year, it’s that depth is still a necessity in this league and the Mercury just don’t have it. As with the Aces, I worry about what that short bench means if there’s an injury among the Mercury’s Big Three (being without Copper in the preseason cost them a game to the Valkyries). Plus, though defense has never been a hallmark of Mercury squads — having traded their best perimeter defender, Phoenix is going to struggle against the league’s top backcourts. The Mercury have to hope for big jump from Celeste Taylor or that one of their international guards can quickly acclimate themselves to life in the W.
For me, though, the biggest hindrance to this team remains the head coach. Seemingly with the front office’s blessing, Tibbetts wants to mold the Mercury into a run-of-the-mill MNBA team. He wants to play a position-less game, where the offense eschews the mid-range and, instead, relies on layups and 35-40 threes per game. It’s a questionable strategy for any team — Kahleah Copper’s mid-range is a thing of beauty — but it’s especially perplexing for a team without high volume, long distance shooters. Of the Big Three, Sabally had the best overall three point percentage (45%) but she only shot six threes per game, no where near what she’d have to do under Tibbetts’ system. In Unrivaled, Sabally increased her volume of three point shooting but her overall percentage went down (37%). If the Mercury thought enough of these players to trade for them, they should be more focused on building an offensive strategy that aligns with their strengths, not try to shoehorn them into playing MNBA-style ball.
TL;DR: Longing to return to championship contention, the Phoenix Mercury took to the free agent market to build the league’s newest Big Three: with Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally joining Kahleah Cooper. Putting together that big three came at a cost, though…a cost that might mean they’re not much better than they were last year.
Late last year, the Chicago Sky took a little time to roast all the teams in the WNBA in their 2025 schedule drop. There was a joke about Indiana’s fans and Connecticut always being the bridesmaid…but when it came time to flame the Seattle Storm, the chase stopped and the narrator candidly admits, “suspect just got a lot goin’ on right now.” Days later, as if to underscore the point, the Golden State Valkyries passed on selecting any member of the Seattle Storm during their expansion draft. Details were scant but it ended with a trade request from the Storm’s most decorated veteran, Jewell Loyd, so it was clear something was wrong in Seattle.
But years as a sports fan have taught me that there are three balms to soothe issues within a locker room: trades, time, and winning. The Storm have delivered on two of those fronts. Loyd got the trade she sought, as she was part of a blockbuster deal that sent her to the Aces, Kelsey Plum to the Sparks, and the #2 pick in the draft — which eventually became Dominique Malonga — to the Storm.
Generally speaking, “super teams” crafted in free agency need a year together before they can reach their potential. They need that time to acclimate to the new environment, to build chemistry with each other, and understand their roles on the team. Seattle tried to speed up that evolution last year and it clearly led to a lot of conflict. This year, the core members of the Storm — Skylar Diggins, Nneka Ogwumike, Ezi Magbegor, and Gabby Williams — have had that time and come into training camp with a renewed sense of what they’re capable of achieving.
Can the Storm, now that they’ve made the trade and taken the time, turn last year’s dysfunction into wins and a strong run in the post-season? Maybe…and, for me, Seattle’s ceiling is going to be determined less by the players and more by the coaching. Even with injuries to Nika Mühl, Jordan Horston, and Katie Lou Samuelson, Noelle Quinn has no shortage of options; Diggins’ assertion that this is “the most talented roster I’ve been a part of” almost inarguably true. The question becomes what combination of that talent allows Seattle to fulfill its potential.
Who starts alongside Diggins in the backcourt? When Diggins joined the team last year, she was just coming off extended maternity leave after her second child, and it took until after the All-Star/Olympic break for her to regain her footing. Spending her off-season participating in Unrivaled has only strengthened Diggins’ game and it’ll pay dividends for the Storm this season, especially if she has a reliable partner in the backcourt.
In building their front court, I think Seattle has to establish Magbegor as their centerpiece but with whom do you pair her? Williams and Ogwumike? Williams and Malonga? Do you move Williams up to shooting guard and play Malonga, Magbegor, and Ogwumike? I loved what I saw from Li Yeru in the Storm’s pre-season match-up…how does she get worked into rotation so she doesn’t languish on the bench? How do you not play Malonga, who could be a generational talent in this league, even if her inexperience hampers her initially? These are difficult coaching decisions but ‘ll also be looking for leadership from Seattle’s veteran post players — Alysha Clark, Ogwumike, and Williams — to ensure that the front court is unified.
TL;DR: During training camp, Skylar Diggins insisted that this Seattle Storm roster was the most talented that she’d been a part of and she’s probably right. If the coaches can figure out the player rotations, Seattle could make a deep run in the playoffs. Between the potential for an in-game dunk from Dominque Malonga or a fiery collision between Skylar Diggins and Jewell Loyd, Seattle could be the most exciting team to watch this season.
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A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good in rhythm three point shot. It’s a thing of beauty. I’m just not thrilled about the prospect of a team shooting 40+ a night.
For context: the Valkyries shot more threes in that preseason game than the Lynx and Liberty shot combined in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals last season.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve fallen for other ballers: a girl who beat me in a foul shooting competition when I was ten, an AAU teammate when I was a teen, an older player who saw me as a baby sibling. The list goes on and on. When I got to college, this habit continued. First, with my teammate, F, which went just about as well as you might think. On the days F was pissed at me and let it leak onto the court, my coach would fold her arms and give me the stink eye. When we stepped on the court, we were supposed to leave our domestic dramas behind, for the good of the team.
When that relationship ended, I went bravely after what I wanted: C, the point guard on a top ten program. I’d played against her since I was a kid in AAU tournaments. She’d been one of the top recruits in our class; every school in the country would have laid out a red carpet for her. But she was also a hothead, and whenever my AAU team played hers, I made it my mission to shut her down on defense, to refuse to let her get a quality shot off. I knew what she liked to do, knew she loved to shoot the three, knew she had an impressive pull-up. She was athletic, too, had hang-time around the basket. One game, I frustrated her so much that she got a technical and stomped off the court, ripping her jersey out of her shorts. That competitiveness I felt with her, the joy I derived from getting in her head was, I realized later, erotic in its intensity, intimate in its knowledge. I wanted that hotheaded point guard to be my hotheaded girlfriend.
In one of my favorite poems, “Asking About You”, Eloise Klein Healy talks about the collision of competition and romance. She begins in an address to her beloved: “Instead of having sex all the time I like to hold you and not get into some involved discussion of what life means.” She continues, saying she wants to know about her partner playing softball and the team picture. Then she says: “What I want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so I could have liked you and competed against you at the same time.”
That collision — I haven’t found a stronger drug yet.
C was closeted, even to her team, which frustrated me given how many of her teammates were out. But that didn’t matter to me, because I was dating my literal dream crush. Fucking gorgeous, could ball out, and was as intense as I was, about basketball, about everything. I know we didn’t invent falling asleep on Skype every night, waking up to each other every morning, and leaving Skype on all day so we could sit down and check if the other was at their desk — but it felt like we did. I watched every one of her games, as long as I wasn’t playing, too, and live-texted her throughout, reacting to each and every play in real-time: That was a nice shot, you’ll hit it next time, or, For the three, legooooooooo, or, Don’t worry about that foul, the call was bullshit. I loved the idea of her digging around in her locker after a game, win or loss, and finding 85 messages from me. My love for her was big, and I knew how to express it through basketball, our language of care.
On our Skype calls, she’d ask for my advice on how to bring the ball up the court without getting picked off. She’d been a shooting guard in high school, and some of the point guard nuances were new to her. When she’d come to visit me in college, we’d take to the court, practicing different ways to create space so she could handle full-court pressure. Then, we’d play one-on-one and nearly kill each other, diving on the floor for loose balls, neither of us willing to let go, not even when we rolled into the padded wall under the basket. That old AAU aggression came out once more. Normally, I reminded her how talented and capable she was, but when she played against me, I wanted to check her ego, wanted to be the reason she remembered why she’d started playing in the first place, why she kept coming back: for the unparalleled high of competition, the blood-churning arousal. For the sex of the game.
After C dumped me because she didn’t want anyone to know about us, I went searching for that same intense connection, where basketball meets the sensual and romantic. I dated A, whose idea of asking me on a date was saying, “Want to get some shots up at the gym?” She played at a school outside the city, so we were able to attend each other’s games in person. For me, there is something so delicious and powerful about being watched, particularly by someone who knows the game as well as I do. She was a baller, through and through. She saw me and my game, and I saw hers. This exchange of seeing is maybe what I was after.
Observing art is often one-sided: There’s the artwork and the person appreciating it. But basketball was our art, our sentient, wild, mutable art, and we were both appreciators, collectors of step-back jumpers and behind-the-back passes and crosses so nasty they cracked every bone in someone’s ankle. Really, to this day, I think she loves the game more than anybody I’ve ever met. On our off days, I wanted cuddles and movies, to nap for six hours straight. She wanted to run drills in the gym, to target our weak spots. She nearly always won the argument of how to spend our time, but only because I knew how lucky I was for the thrill of loving something with someone I loved. To, in not so many words, get to fuck basketball, my first and most transformative love.
My queerness always came second to basketball. I thought of myself as a basketball player who happened to be queer. It was only when I graduated and lost high-level basketball that the order reversed and I started considering myself a queer person who once played basketball. Graduating and retiring from the game, the yearning felt a lot like the yearning of my closeted queer youth — the wanting and wanting for something that seems it cannot ever be. I felt at odds with myself. My queerness had always been so wrapped up in my playing. Without basketball, I had no framework for that part of my life either, no understanding of how to engage with or perform desire, no context for how to date or relate to others who weren’t athletes. I’d only ever dated basketball players except for the NARP (non-athletic regular person — yes, this was unfortunately a real term we used) who called me Number 12. She was an artist, which helped me tap into the writerly part of me I typically hid, but it would be many years before I settled into that identity. I’d have to convince myself basketball wasn’t the center of my world anymore. And in order to do that, I had to admit to myself, and then accept, that my playing days were over; there would be no professional overseas career for me thanks to my body, my arthritic, ruined, four-ACL-tears-deep body. If basketball has been my most profound love, then losing it has been my most profound grief. A grief made easier only because I don’t have to face it alone.
Even all these years later, I met and married a fellow athlete in Ash, who played rugby for 18 years, and before that, high school soccer, and before that, baseball on boys’ teams. Though it was never her primary sport, it was basketball that brought us together. We met at a rec league game. From tip-off, it was as if we’d been playing together for a decade, always and forever the best type of connection. I knew she’d get out and run on the fast break, so when I received the outlet pass from our forward, I wouldn’t even take a dribble, would just turn and lob it up the court, into her hands for an easy lay-up.
What does it mean that I continue to seek athletes out, post-basketball? What is it she helps me see in myself? In a way, does being with her keep me tied to that part of me I yearn for? Our domestic life is grounded in sports, in teamwork and chemistry. When we go camping in Zion National Park, we walk to the bathroom to do our breakfast dishes together. In every direction, nothing but red-streaked cliffs. “You scrub and I’ll dry?” she says. I find our collaboration stirring. Hands moving simultaneously, dishes passed hand to hand, no words spoken, just the sweet rush of the water and a few small grunts that escape my mouth when I really dig into a scrubbing a pan. It reminds me of basketball, of hands in a huddle, hands reaching out for a low five on the court, hands exchanging a ball in the half-court offense.
At home, we crumple up bills and shoot them into trash cans like kids in school. We toss our children’s toys to each other from across the room, marveling at our one-handed catches, our feats of extreme athleticism. We can’t believe ESPN doesn’t follow us around with a camera. We hype each other up. We pretend we are Olympians. We keep each other in the game just enough to recognize how far out of it we really are.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Mac Crane is a sweatpants enthusiast, former college basketball player, and the author of two novels, A Sharp Endless Need (May 2025), and I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next pick, and winner of a LAMBDA Literary Award. They have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and Vermont Studio Center, and their short work has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere. Originally from Allentown, PA, they currently live in San Diego with their family.
Andor has always felt uncomfortably timely. I’ve mentioned in previous reviews that creator Tony Gilroy insists the parallels between today’s current political crises and authoritarian atrocities come from attention to history rather than any attempt to speak to our current moment. I believe him and, when you consider the fact that the disturbing events depicted in this season’s third episode arc (comprising “The Messenger, “Who Are You?,” and “Welcome to the Rebellion”) have been known details within Star Wars canon for decades, the unsettling parallels between fiction and reality feel coincidental but also inevitable. Authoritarian regimes commit violence, and then they lie about the violence that they perpetrate. They take lives and dictate reality for the survivors. In its most harrowing and arguably best arc to date, Andor tells an unflinching narrative of genocide, capturing in minute detail the prelude to and shattering aftermath of its violence.
The planet of Ghorman has been in the Empire’s crosshairs for years now. As we’ve seen across the previous six episodes of Andor’s second season, the Imperial war machine has a vested interest in extracting a rare metal contained deep beneath its surface, a destabilizing process that would render the planet uninhabitable. In order to get the rest of the galaxy to sign on for this act of destruction, the Imperial propaganda machine has been working overtime. When we first return to Palmo’s central plaza in “The Messenger,” it’s crowded with journalists spewing Imperial talking points, accusing the Ghormans of shirking the Empire’s social norms and conducting scattered attacks (many of which are hinted at being inside jobs conducted by ISB agents) against the occupying forces. The narrative of an overly privileged and rudely defiant culture has taken root the galaxy over. When ISB leader Lio Partagaz informs his protege Dedra Meero that the Ghorman campaign will be coming to its explosive end soon, it’s already clear the Empire will get what it wants. The political and social momentum is on their side. The material need for Ghorman’s destruction is pressing. The Empire simply needs to light a match and watch Palmo and the rest of the planet go up in flames.
“The Messenger” and “Who Are You?” both make the coming Imperial genocide feel like a looming stormfront, but one only a select few can see. It only takes Cassian — who is on planet to take part in a quickly scuttled assassination attempt of Meero — a few seconds to realize on the morning of the massacre that the Empire has changed its behavior. The formerly occupied city plaza is cleared out, the barricades are moved to Imperial headquarters, and the troops slowly begin to move themselves in front of potential exits. The Empire, as always, has a plan.
As passionately chanting Ghorman protesters flood the now cleared plaza, the coming violence dawns not only on Cassian and a few horrified members of the Ghorman Front, but to Syril Karn, the series’ resident fascist fanboy. When Syril was first introduced in the series’ opening arc, he was an ambitious corporate cop, eager to enforce the rules and regulations of the Empire. Syril’s singular focus for maintaining law and order has been his defining characteristic, even as his career and status are quickly stripped away from him. His dedication to maintaining Imperial security is what initially endears him to Meero and lands him an ISB job on Ghroman helping to manipulate the local resistance movement.
While Syril has never stopped hating who he views as dissidents, terrorists, and criminals, Andor has shown over the past few episodes that he does hold a modicum of empathy for the Ghorman people themselves. When he slowly begins to understand just what exactly he helped his partner and the ISB set into motion, it’s world shattering. What the Empire is poised to enact on the Ghorman plaza isn’t some twisted form of keeping the peace or punishing the guilty; it’s manufactured permission to commit genocide. Syril realizes that not only is his partner the mastermind of the slaughter, but that his own dedication to the Imperial cause is equally to blame. Fascism doesn’t care about laws, rules, or justice. These are simply tools by which it can accomplish its consolidation of power. It depends on idealistic and short-sighted supporters like Syril to make that possible. At the end of the day, that’s all Syril ever was to the Empire, a tool in its world devouring war machine.
And, of course, appropriately, he realizes too late. The massacre of Ghorman begins with a strategically placed shot by an Imperial sniper and blanket permission by Meero and her compatriots to open fire on civilians. Syril doesn’t get to be the hero. You cannot save the day while doing the work of fascism. He gets to witness firsthand the capricious cruelty of the government he’s dedicated his life to and, shortly after, experiences as undignified a fate as possible. It’s a fitting conclusion for one of Andor’s best antagonists.
The massacre that unfolds in the final third of “Who Are You?” is maybe the most intense and upsetting sequence in the Star Wars universe. While the violence is still couched in the trappings of space opera and fantasy, the chaos and disregard for life depicted carries the horrifying weight it should. Director Janus Metz and episodic writer Dan Gilroy so masterfully capture the rising tension of the moment and the chaotic violence that follows that it hardly matters that the weapons of war being used are laser guns and seven-foot-tall skeletal security droids; it’s still the government sanctioned mass murder of civilians. Andor appropriately doesn’t depict the Empire’s actions on Palmo as some sort of thrilling action sequence. Cassian doesn’t get the chance to play hero and rescue civilians. There are no flashy takedowns of Stormtroopers or Imperial security. There’s just terror and a mad scramble to survive. Many do not.
In the smoke-clogged aftermath of the massacre, the Empire is quick to blame the death and destruction on Ghorman’s civilians while painting its own fallen operatives as patriotic heroes gunned down in a senseless act of defiance. “Who Are You?” hauntingly closes out with a shot of Syril Karn’s mother sobbing at a news broadcast, eating up every word of propaganda about her son’s demise.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, Ghorman’s representative in the Imperial senate is arrested and Mon Mothma decides she’s had enough. She can no longer be part of a government that arrests its own elected officials, murders its civilians, and then shirks any accountability. Her incremental attempts to stem the tide of fascism from within the system have failed. All she can do now is speak out against the Empire’s actions and commit herself to the rebellion.
“Welcome to the Rebellion” almost entirely focuses on Mothma’s preparation and delivery of a speech condemning the Empire’s actions. However, it is openly known that this degree of open defiance against The Emperor will end in her near immediate arrest and disappearance. This not only means a threat to Mothma’s safety, but her role in funding and coordinating with Luthen’s rebellion means her capture could potentially collapse the entire resistance movement. Once again, Janus Metz and Dan Gilroy craft a masterfully suspenseful hour of television as Mothma prepares to burn down her public life for good and Cassian enacts a desperate extraction effort to get the Senator to safety.
There’s so much to talk about in “Welcome to the Rebellion.” It marks a turning point within the Star Wars universe, finally introduces Cassian to Mon Mothma and to his Rogue One companion K-2SO. It also has a lot to say about the personal sacrifices needed to fight against the forces of fascism. I wanted to call attention to Mon Mothma’s speech though. Andor has delivered some already iconic monologues in its time (I rewatch Maarva’s hologram eulogy after pretty much every bit of awful political news), and this was no exception. In maybe the series’ most pointedly political statement to date, Mon Mothma calls out the Empire for its actions on Ghorman and for its lying and obfuscation of responsibility.
“The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide! Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!”
Denying objective truth is the ultimate weapon of authoritarianism. The words we use to describe our shared reality matter. In Star Wars and in our world, the mass murder of civilians is genocide. It is our moral duty and obligation to say this, to not look away from the atrocities committed by those in power even as they do their damndest to make us do otherwise.
There isn’t a more pressing and thought-provoking series airing right now. Few other shows dare to speak as directly and unflinchingly to the cruelty of the American empire and its allies, but also to the necessity of pushback to that violence, even if it requires the hardest of sacrifices. It’s masterful and essential television.
Gays in Space
I guess it showed after last week’s review that I’ve never watched The 100. Quite a few readers saw an unfortunate parallel between Cinta’s tragic death in “What a Festive Evening” and Lexa’s similar murder in the dystopian YA series, which in turn made me think of the killing of Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What exactly is the fixation in giving lesbians a moment of happiness before having them gunned down by a stray bullet (or blaster bolt in Cinta’s case)? It’s a weirdly consistent trend. While I cannot speak to Lexa and The 100, I will say that Cinta’s death in Andor feels to me much more purposeful and tonally consistent than Tara’s shock factor slaying in Buffy. This season of Andor has been killing off major characters left and right; this week has even heavier losses. Heroes, soldiers, and passersby die senseless deaths during revolution. I can rationalize killing off Cinta for this reason, but the ways that her murder so clearly evokes problematic storytelling choices in other series is worthy of discussion, debate, and critique.
We do get to check in on Vel briefly this week. Understandably, the year since Cinta’s passing has been a taxing one. After months of harsh smuggling runs and self-punishing field missions, Vel returns to the newly constructed base on Yavin IV to recuperate and be of more practical use to the rebellion. It’s refreshing to see her talk with Bix about her grieving process and how she currently views herself within the context of the war effort. Andor is populated with so many fascinating and multilayered women characters that it’s always a delight anytime they finally get to cross paths with one another. While Vel’s comments to Bix mostly serve as a way to help feed into her decision to abandon Cassian so he stays dedicated to the cause, it’s still a wonderfully acted sequence that adds further depth to two already standout characters.
Other than that, unfortunately, we are low on space gay content this week, but given how outstanding and busy these three installments are, I can’t really complain too much. Only three more episodes to go before this all ends. There’s a lot to cover before Andor closes out this era of Star Wars storytelling, but I hope that at the very least Vel doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. She deserves an ending that’s as compelling and nuanced as she is.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Nic Anstett is a writer from Baltimore, MD who specializes in the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, University of Oregon’s MFA program, and the Tin House Summer Workshop where she was a 2021 Scholar. Her work is published and forthcoming in Witness Magazine, Passages North, North American Review, Lightspeed, Bat City Review, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Annapolis, MD with her girlfriend and is at work on a collection of short stories and maybe a novel.
Lauren Chan at the 2024 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Launch Party held at the Hard Rock Cafe on May 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images)
Lauren Chan Becomes the First Out Lesbian Solo on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
Lauren Chan says her entire career is based around inclusion and representation, because she’s a plus-size, queer, Asian model. This career — which has won her Canadian fashion awards and a spot on Marie Claire’s 2023 Power List — has led her to be the first out lesbian (and she thinks possibly the first Chinese person) to have a solo cover in Sports Illustrated’s famous swimsuit issue.
As exciting as this is, to borrow a term Ziwe Fumudoh coined on the podcast Hysteria, it feels a little “sadgressive.” It’s undoubtedly something to be celebrated! I’m very happy for Lauren Chan and all the success she’s had in her career as someone with the odds stacked against her. It just feels a bit depressing that 2025 marks the first time it’s happened.
However, it’s undeniably important. As Chan herself says, her very existence and persistence at succeeding in her career contributes to “the continued dismantling of the beauty ideal — especially at a time where we are seeing a decrease in diversity on runways, in television.”
On top of being amazing representation for all of the communities she is part of, she also is an ambassador for the National Eating Disorder Association and on the advisory board for the Model Alliance. She came out as a lesbian in 2023, and is now engaged to film director Hayley Kosan, whose Instagram bio now hilariously reads, “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Husband of the Year 2025.”
Follow Me Down the Runway for More News
+ The Ironheart trailer is official here! Jury’s still out on the sexuality of Riri herself, but the show will feature non-binary actor Zoe Terakes from Wentworth and queer actor Regan Aliyah from XO, Kitty.
+ Ryan Murphy’s newest show All’s Fair will follow a team of female divorce attorneys and stars Niecy Nash-Betts, Sarah Paulson, Teyana Taylor, and more
+ Catch a (very) brief glimpse of queer actress Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl in the latest Superman trailer (and a longer glimpse at the goodest boy on any planet, Krypto)
+ In a confusing turn of events, Out’s “Pride” cover has five Broadway stars on it…only one of whom is queer (the rest are all undoubtedly icons to the queer community and in my Broadway heart and soul, and they’re dedicated allies, and at least Lea Salonga has a trans kid, but c’mon it’s the PRIDE issue!)
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Valerie Anne (she/they) a TV-loving, video-game-playing nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories in all forms. While having a penchant for sci-fi, Valerie will watch anything that promises a good story, and especially if that good story is queer.
Last week, A’ja Wilson’s signature shoe, the A’One, finally went on sale; they were sold out in less than five minutes. Nike’s promoting the A’Ones with commercials (directed by Malia Obama, no less) and billboards in a way they’ve never done before for a women’s signature shoe. The week before, Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Sabrina Ionescu, and Angel Reese were representing for the W and their respective clubs at the MET Gala. There seems to be a constant stream of moments like these nowadays…moments that I couldn’t have even fathomed ten years ago…moments that show how women’s basketball has captured the zeitgeist. We’re not just changing the game, we’re changing the culture. But that evolution starts on the court and this week — just 41 days after the NCAA crowned its champion — our favorite female ballers are back on floor, competing for a championship.
Between the expansion draft and free agency, it was an unpredictable off-season and it’s only going to get crazier. Over 100 of the WNBA’s 156 players will be free agents at the end of the season, as they hope to take full advantage of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (assuming it’s ratified and there is no work stoppage). The free agent class of 2025 took full advantage of one year deals and found new homes: Alyssa Thomas is in Phoenix, Brittney Griner’s in Atlanta…and, in a move that’s going to take a lot of getting used to, Sydney Colson’s in Indiana with DeWanna Bonner. Couple that player movement with the hiring of eight new coaches in league, this feels like one of the most unpredictable seasons in the WNBA’s 29 year history.
To help you prepare for the new season, I’ve done all the homework on the league’s 13 (!!) teams. I went deep into my nerdy basketball bag and offered my best guess for what the future might hold for the teams across the league. Today, we’re offering previews of teams in the Eastern Conference and tomorrow we’ll talk about what’s happening out West. Final rosters are due to the WNBA by Friday so some of the information included here might change before the season tips off; I’ll update this post as necessary. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Autostraddle without answering the most important question of the WNBA season: who all’s gay here? (WAGH).
Brittney Griner #42 of the Atlanta Dream reacts after hitting a three-point basket against the Indiana Fever during the first quarter of a preseason game at Gateway Center Arena on May 10, 2025 in College Park, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Do you know who the three winningest coaches in women’s college basketball are? You could probably guess two of them, UCONN’s Geno Auriemma and Baylor/LSU’s Kim Mulkey; they are, for better or worse, household names. The third, you probably don’t know, because mid-majors don’t get the shine they deserve but for 22 years, Karl Smesko has built Florida Gulf Coast into Atlantic Sun Conference powerhouse. During his run at FGCU, Smesko went 611-112 overall, winning a staggering 93% of their conference games. Simply put, Karl Smesko is a winner and now, the Atlanta Dream are hoping he can bring those winning ways to the W.
Smesko’s success at the collegiate level is due in large part to his analytics-driven, high octane five-out system. The offensive scheme prioritizes ball movement and efficiency; Smesko’s teams are either hitting catch-and-shoot three pointers or attacking the basket for a layup. It’s truly position-less basketball that’s incredibly fun to watch, but it’s an identity that Smesko forged at FGCU out of necessity.
“I definitely think it would be wrong with Stanford’s personnel or South Carolina’s personnel to try to do what we do,” Smesko told The Next Hoops in 2023. “Those coaches are obviously two of the best in the game, and they know the way to win is to utilize your talent and maximize your talent, and that’s what they do. For us, it’s hard to get somebody like a Haley Jones or a Cameron Brink or someone like that, so we need to have an alternative that can be successful.”
Which brings us to the problem with a Smesko-led Dream team: the lack of personnel that drove Smesko to adopt the five-out system at FGCU isn’t an issue in the W. In fact, the aforementioned Haley Jones is now sitting on Smesko’s bench. The five-out system prizes the three point shot but Dream All-Star Rhyne Howard excels in the mid-range. Five-out is a position-less scheme but then the Dream go out and grab the two truest of the biggest bigs on the free agent market in the offseason: Brittney Griner (from Phoenix) and Brionna Jones (from Connecticut). Now, admittedly, Griner looked as agile in Unrivaled as we’ve seen her in years — going from dunking to knocking down threes — but it’s still hard to imagine Griner and Jones fitting into the Smesko system. So…does Smesko change the system that got him to the W or does he ask more of the players he has on his roster? It’s truly anyone’s guess.
TL;DR: Last year, the Dream were the least efficient team in the WNBA. If Karl Smesko can develop a system that plays to the strengths of his lineup while also upgrading their efficiency — as he’s wont to do — then I think the Dream could finish this season with a winning record.
Angel Reese #5 of the Chicago Sky Hailey Van Lith #2 of the Chicago Sky and Michaela Onyenwere #12 of the Chicago Sky on the bench during the second half against the Minnesota Lynx on May 6, 2025 (Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Early in the 2024 WNBA Season, Chicago Sky center Elizabeth Williams went down with a torn meniscus. Williams wasn’t putting up big numbers through nine games — she averaged 10 points, 7 rebounds per game prior to her injury — but what she meant to the Sky wasn’t something easily captured on the stat sheet. Drafted into the league in 2015, Williams came into her own as part of the Atlanta Dream: leading the effort to elect Raphael Warnock and oust her own boss from office. She’s a bit of a journeyman, having played in Connecticut, Atlanta, Washington, and Chicago, but at each stop Williams continues to get better and, perhaps more importantly, she makes the players around her better.
On the court, Williams knew how to space the floor to ensure that the then-rookie phenom, Angel Reese, had space to do Angel Reese things. Williams’ 28 minutes per game meant that Kamila Cardoso could take time, recovering from her pre-season injury and acclimating to life in the W. Off the court, Williams is a trusted voice — the Secretary of the WNBA Players Association and the 2023 winner of the WNBA’s Sportsmanship Award — and perhaps could’ve stymied whatever went wrong in the Sky locker room last season. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case: Williams got injured and left a leadership vacuum in Chicago.
Williams is back this season and in the off-season, the Chicago Sky prioritized bringing in more players like her — Courtney Vandersloot (from New York), Rebecca Allen (from Connecticut via Phoenix), and Kia Nurse (from Phoenix) — seasoned vets who could help Chicago’s young core hone their game, while being consistent contributors in their own rite. On top of that, the Sky have a new coach, Tyler Marsh, who excelled in player development during his time in Las Vegas. I’m anxious to see what Reese, Cardoso, Hayley Van Lith, and Maddy Westbeld can grow in that kind of environment. If it’s anything like what we saw from Reese during Unrivaled — soaking up feedback from vets like a sponge — it could accelerate the Sky’s development into a championship contender.
TL;DR: With a strong mix of savvy veterans and indefatigable youth, the Chicago Sky has the potential to make a big jump this season; anything short of the playoffs — even in Tyler Marsh’s first year — would be a disappointment. I loved the growth we saw from Angel Reese during Unrivaled but I’m looking for Kamilla Cardoso to fuel Chicago’s offensive leap. Her offseason is China was spectacular: she finished the season averaging 20 points and 11 rebounds per game and was voted the league’s MVP.
Connecticut Sun
2024 Season: 28-12; Lost in the second round of the playoffs WAGH:Diamond DeShields
Yvonne Anderson #12 of Connecticut Sun drives against Skylar Diggins-Smith #4 of Seattle Storm during the second quarter of a preseason WNBA game at Climate Pledge Arena on May 04, 2025. (Photo by Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)
September 21, 2024. It’s the day before the Connecticut Sun will open post-season play. They had a big test ahead of them, a resurgent Indiana Fever team who had been playing their best basketball since the Olympic break. But when the Sun players wanted to get a little more practice on that Saturday, on the eve of the playoffs, they were told they couldn’t: the venue needed the space to host a two-year old’s birthday party.
“[It’s the] ultimate disrespect,” Alyssa Thomas told The Next. “We need more, we need better to compete at the highest level.”
Less than five months after that two-year old’s birthday party, the roster of the Connecticut Sun is almost unrecognizable. The players who had propelled the franchise to eight straight playoff appearances was gone: Thomas to Phoenix, Brionna Jones to Atlanta, Dijonai Carrington to Dallas, DeWanna Bonner to Indiana, Tiffany Mitchell to the Las Vegas, Veronica Burton to Golden State. Marina Mabrey is still in Uncasville but that’s not for a lack of trying. No one’s said definitively what happened in Connecticut…whether Stephanie White’s departure hastened the exodus or if seeing how the other half lives at Unrivaled did it…but for me, it feels like that two-year old’s birthday party cost the Connecticut Sun their entire lineup. The Connecticut front office keeps assuring everyone that the franchise is not in rebuilding mode but I’m not sure anyone truly believes them.
The Sun look to kick-off their new era with Rachid Meziane taking over as head coach. Admittedly, I don’t know enough about his style of play but his resume is impressive. I’m hopeful that he can continue to leverage the relationships he’s built coaching in France and Belgium to help rebuild the Sun. Already, he’s convinced the Sun’s 2024 draft pick, Leïla Lacan, and Euroleague mainstay Yvonne Anderson to join the squad. Could Emma Meesseman be next?
TL;DR: After losing their head coach and their entire starting lineup in free agency, the Connecticut Sun are in rebuilding mode (even if they don’t want to call it that). It’s hard for me to imagine Connecticut competing for anything but a 2026 lottery pick this year. That said, look out for the Sun’s rookies: there’s so much opportunity for them to have standout seasons and perhaps even compete for Rookie Of the Year.
Indiana Fever forward DeWanna Bonner (25) takes a shot against the Washington Mystics on May 3, 2025, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In 2015, the Seattle Storm took Jewell Loyd with the #1 pick in the WNBA Draft. The following year, the Storm captured the #1 pick again, this time drafting Breanna Stewart. Two years later, the Seattle Storm won the franchise’s third WNBA Championship. Likewise, in Las Vegas, the Aces used back-to-back #1 draft picks to draft A’ja Wilson (2018) and Jackie Young (2019). Three years later, the Aces won their first WNBA championship. Both instances show that it takes time to build chemistry and capitalize on talent at this level.
The Indiana Fever are in a similar situation, having drafted Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark with back-to-back #1 draft picks, but can they do what the Storm and the Aces could not: win a WNBA championship just one year after drafting their second #1 pick? For me, the answer is a maybe.
To be sure, I think the Indiana Fever are already a much better team than they were last year. The core returns strong: Clark looks rejuvenated after a full off-season of rest, Boston’s already showcasing lessons she took from Unrivaled, and Kelsey Mitchell is coming off an impressive off-season in China where she averaged 23 PPG. The team’s front office made the most of free agency and put some strong pieces around their core. Sophie Cunningham brings another outside shooting threat to the Fever rotation. Natasha Howard is a former Defensive Player of the Year who can also bolster Indiana’s interior game on both ends of the court. Syd Colson‘s a skilled ball handler who can allow the Fever to give Clark more rest than she got last season. All three bring much needed playoff experience to this Fever roster.
But, for me, the most crucial acquisition for the Fever in the off-season — Stephanie White, notwithstanding — is DeWanna Bonner. Simply put, she elevates this team in every possible way. She experienced a career resurgence under White in Connecticut and will bring that talent to bear in Indiana. But Bonner’s her veteran leadership that fulfills the Indiana’s greatest need. Who better to show Mitchell and Boston how to co-exist with a superstar than someone who won championships with Diana Taurasi? Who better to teach this show this team how to support each other and how to play their roles than someone who’s a three time Sixth Woman of the Year? Bonner will be the bridge that carries the Fever from a playoff team to a championship contender.
All that said, I’m not ready to crown the Fever yet primarily because I don’t trust their defense, especially on the perimeter. Last year, the Fever had one of the worst defensive ratings in the league and it’s going to take more than Bonner and Howard to turn that around.
TL;DR: The Fever return a strong core — Aliyah Boston, Caitlin Clark, and Kelsey Mitchell — and have surrounded them with all the pieces they needed, most notably an experienced head coach and veteran leadership, to make them into a contender.
Natasha Howard, Jonquel Jones and Jaylyn Sherrod after a preseason game against the Toyota Antelopes (Photo by Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)
In some ways, it feels like the celebration of the New York Liberty’s WNBA championship — the franchise’s first — still hasn’t stopped. Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Breanna Stewart alongside Clara Wu Tsai at the MET Gala felt like a continuation of the excitement that spilled out onto Broadway for the Liberty’s ticker tape parade. This franchise, this city, these fans waited 25 years for this so one can hardly begrudge them a few extra months of celebration.
But now we’re at the point where being the reigning champions means something other than banners and rings. Now being reigning champions means targets are on your backs. It means teams being painstakingly put together with a mission to dethrone you. It means that each and every night, you’re going to get the absolute best from whomever your opponent is. There’s a reason that back-to-back championships are so hard to accomplish in the W; heavy is the head that wears the crown.
The quest to repeat has already been stymied: first, by the expansion draft which sent one of New York’s key bench players, Kayla Thornton, to Golden State. Perhaps the Liberty can find another 3-and-D player who can guard multiple positions to fill the void Thornton leaves on the floor, but it’s harder to imagine them filling the void Thornton leaves in the locker room. She was the glue of that championship team and her absence will, no doubt, be felt this season. The Liberty will also be without Betnijah Laney-Hamilton who suffered a meniscus tear while playing in Unrivaled.
That said, there’s also a lot to be excited about with this Liberty team. Courtney Vandersloot’s departure in free agency hurts but acquiring Natasha Cloud from Connecticut feels like a step up, especially on the defensive end. Rebekah Gardner‘s healed from her Achilles injury and should be able to slot into the rotation… if she’s even close to being the player she was in Chicago, New York’s got something to fill Thornton’s shoes. PLUS! Marine Johannès is back and I’m looking forward to seeing how she’ll astound us all with fall-away, one-legged three point shots.
My concerns about the Liberty are two-fold: first, after injuring herself at some point in the playoffs, Stewie played in Unrivaled and then had “minor” knee surgery. I’m curious about how close to 100% she is and will she be on a minutes restriction to start the season. Second, when Leonie Fiebich, Nyara Sabally, and Johannès (presumably) leave New York to participate in Eurobasket, how does the Liberty bench hold up in their absence?
TL;DR: The New York Liberty have brought back much of their 2024 Championship squad and bolstered their bench during the off-season. On paper, they look like a team capable of a repeat.
Brittney Sykes #20 of the Washington Mystics dribbles past Kelsey Mitchell #0 of the Indiana Fever during the first half at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on May 3, 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images)
When the Thibault era ended in Washington — with Eric Thibault’s dismissal as head coach and Mike Thibault’s dismissal as general manager — I had high hopes. There were a bevy of great options available but, in particular, there were a lot of interesting candidates with ties to the Mystics franchise who I thought would be great fits: former Minnesota Assistant Katie Smith, former Mystics Assistant LaToya Pringle Sanders, Phoenix Assistant Kristi Toliver, or former G League Head Coach Lindsey Harding. But since this Mystics franchise never misses an opportunity to confound me, they went with Sydney Johnson instead.
My best guess is that the Mystics want a bit of a placeholder coach: someone who can lead the team through a rebuild and establish a culture within the locker room, before eventually hiring a coach that’ll take the Mystics back to the league’s upper echelon. But even if that’s what they’re looking for, I’m not sure that I’d put my money on Johnson, whose lone experience at this level was in Chicago’s dysfunctional locker room last season.
That said, the vibes out of Mystics training camp are good. Brittney Sykes is coming off a strong performance in Unrivaled and Johnson will definitely be looking to her and Stefanie Dolson, as the team’s most experienced players, to lead this young team. We’ll see how Johnson’s dependence on Dolson as a team leader fares when it clashes with the front office’s interest in cashing in on her trade value. A mobile big who can stretch the floor? A lot of championship contenders will be looking to coax her away by the trade deadline.
For years, I’ve been touting Shakira Austin as a potential WNBA All-Star level talent but injuries have hamstrung her progress. I’m hoping this is the year that Austin can showcase her full range of talent. Likewise, I loved the growth we saw from Aaliyah Edwards during her time at Unrivaled and I hope it translates over to the W this season. I do worry, though, about Austin, Edwards, or Kiki Iriafen, having their development stifled because they’re not given enough time in the Mystics’ post rotation.
Washington’s most pressing issue is at the point guard slot, following Georgia Amoore’s season ending ACL injury. The Mystics still have Jade Melbourne and, obviously, Sykes can take over some ball handling but they need a legitimate point guard. I’m looking for the Mystics to make an extra cut from their training camp roster to claim, possibly, one of the point guards that gets waived in Atlanta.
TL;DR: Washington is fully in their rebuilding era and, as such, wins will likely be in short supply for Mystics fans this season. That said, this young team has a lot of fight in them so other teams shouldn’t expect their wins over the Mystics to come easily.
What are your thoughts on the six teams out East? Which team do you think will represent the Eastern Conference in the Commissioner’s Cup?
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.
The East is stacked this season — culture, talent, and big moves.
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thank you as always for this essential guide!
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This is exactly what I needed to prep for the season! Can’t wait for tomorrow’s guide.
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Just a note for new fans jumping in with the Fever that Sophie Cunningham is openly transphobic. Indiana’s fan base has become…divisive? in the last year with the hoard of new fans coming over from Caitlin Clark+Iowa and I’m nervous about how Cunningham’s presence will play into that. Also don’t understand how she fits Stephanie White’s descriptor of “people who put the shopping cart back”
This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.
Earlier this year, my close friend and creative partner, Brendan, and I were given a small grant by our county’s arts and culture division to produce a documentary film. Our proposal outlined our intention to highlight the unique aspects of the South Florida gym where we powerlift. Through our mutual and disparate experiences there, we noticed our gym is unlike any other athletic space we’ve been in. It’s a serious powerlifting and weightlifting gym, but it also has a family-like atmosphere — only this family is perpetually accepting of who you are and of your life experiences. This family is fully supportive of the work you do inside and outside of the gym. This family doesn’t care if you’re a freak, because we’re all freaks. It’s a family of freaks.
I don’t think this kind of environment is totally uncommon in the world of competitive sports, but in a place as politically and socially divided as Florida is, this diverse community’s ties to and trust in each other feels like a small miracle. A small miracle that helped improve both our lives and further ingrained in us what we’ve known is true for so long: Community is wherever you want it to be so long as everyone’s willing to put in the work.
Since we started filming the documentary, Brendan and I have been calling this little community the “Misfits League,” a bunch of weirdos who by luck and by grace came together to build something that’s transformed all of us for the better. And that’s how the story has taken shape. With our premiere date looming, we had to wrap our work on the documentary entirely last week and send it to the editor we’ve hired to add all the final touches it needs to look and feel like a real feature. When we began the process of interviewing our friends, recording B-roll footage and outlining the story we’re trying to tell, neither of us had any filmmaking experience. We had a vision but, being that every creative endeavor we’ve ever taken on together has been a “learn by doing” experience, we figured we could hack it, even if it’s not perfect. We just wanted to create something beautiful for the community that’s held us over the last few years. After a couple months of filming, we learned we’d both be relocating to different states for new jobs this summer, which meant we’d also be moving away from Florida, from the gym, from the people there we’ve come to love so dearly.
As we were rewatching and editing footage down over the past two weeks, I was struck by how endearing it was to see some of the strongest, toughest people I know in such vulnerable positions, how much closer their responses to our questions made me feel to them, and how much I’d been trying to hide how distraught I was about leaving them so soon. Over the last two and half years, I’ve taken advantage of the comfort I always feel in the space of that gym. I’ve joked with my brothers and other siblings between (and sometimes during) lifts. They’ve cheered me on for my accomplishments —like finally hitting a squat to depth over 200 pounds —and I’ve returned the favor.
I always knew I could walk in there on the hardest days of my life — as I did the day after my mom died in 2023 — and not just lift with familiar faces next to me but be carried by their words, their hugs, and their love for me. When I began my weightlifting (and then powerlifting) journey in the summer of 2022, I wasn’t looking for anything other than a fix for the severe osteoarthritis in my knees. The gym owner, Ryan, says I was “barely on the bus” when I first began to ride with this community. I couldn’t squat at all, everything took my breath away and made my skin feel like it was ripping apart, and I often dreaded how grueling it felt before I even stepped foot in the gym to begin my workouts. These people took me in with all of my inabilities, made me part of their family, helped me fall in love with the sport, and made me an athlete when no one else ever told me I could be if I wanted.
Every day, I get a little closer to having to say that final Goodbye to my gym family. I’m not looking forward to this part. I know finding a gym that suits my training needs in my new city won’t be difficult, but through making this movie, I was reminded once again that the process of becoming your strongest self isn’t just dependent on the equipment you have access to. You need people to push you in the ways you need to be pushed, to tell you that failing doesn’t mean you’re bound to fail forever, to call you out when you’re letting yourself down, and to remind you that you deserve care and you deserve to give care in return. This kind of atmosphere is more essential than any piece of equipment.
As the documentary comes to completion and I prepare to leave over the next few months, I’ve been trying not to focus on how much I’ll miss walking into this place every day. I’m trying to figure out ways to take what I’ve learned with me when I go, to spread those lessons to every person I can, and to keep building communities wherever I am, no matter who’s there. I know the Misfits League doesn’t have to end here. I don’t think any of us, with our ever-shifting lives, will ever let it.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Stef Rubino is a writer, community organizer, competitive powerlifter, and former educator from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They're currently working on book of essays and preparing for their next powerlifting meet. They’re the fat half of the arts and culture podcast Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, and you can read some of their other writing in Change Wire and in Catapult. You can also find them on Twitter (unfortunately).
Hello and welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I tell you what our favorite famous queers got up to via Instagram! Let’s get this show on the road!
Sandra Oh and Meg?? That’s the shit I do like! Meg clocking Sandra for her greatness? Even better! The random guest that walked behind them in this video that I cannot stop thinking about?
Stop playing with me Melissa and release a whole cover! This is so good!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
When it comes to writing that’s defined my life, there are few artists more important to me than Mac Crane. It’s not something I say easily. The art I love holds a piece of my heart, and that isn’t something I’m quick to give away. But when I first read Crane’s debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself, I had no other choice. Their writing helped me redefine my relationship to my own shame and showed me the ways institutions use shame to validate systems of surveillance and marginalization. They wrote with an assurance of love in the face of evil that’s stayed with me for years. It revitalized my belief that the best way to fight those institutions is through community care. Yet somehow, I learned just as much from their second novel, A Sharp Endless Need, as I did from their first.
The novel is a first-person narration by Mackenzie “Mack” Morris, a high school senior and point guard living in small town Pennsylvania in 2004, facing the looming deadline of college signing. The year is laced with equal parts sorrow and desire, beginning with the death of Mack’s father. In dying, Mack’s father leaves behind an inescapable amount of credit card debt, shifting Mack’s future scholarship from a matter of pride to a matter of necessity. Losing their father also means that Mack loses the parent who sees one of the most essential parts of themselves: who they are as a player.
On the other side of that grief comes Liv, a transfer student who joins the team and tears into every aspect of Mack’s life. The two are drawn to each other immediately, sharing a chemistry on the court that jumps off the page through masterful description. They each hold an innate understanding of the mind and body of the other, pushing each other beyond the boundaries of what they were told was possible. This goes for both their athletic plays and how they’re allowed to see each other. In playing basketball, they are able to give space to their queerness before speaking it out loud into the universe. As Crane writes, “But we knew, in the deeps of our hips, that basketball was more erotic than dancing; it was collaboration, a mutual creation, a way of fucking without touching.”
One of the many things I love about this novel is the way it is able to highlight the intersection of sex and basketball. It’s the language of bodies. At their heart, great sex and great basketball rely on the same fundamental principles: trust, attention, collaboration, and a desire to create something with whoever you’re with.
The time Mack spends around Liv brings their queerness to center stage, something both beautiful and dangerous. Being a queer teenager in a red town in a red state in 2004 comes with heartbreaks. Mack lives in a world where they aren’t given the language they need to express their queerness fully. Both Mack and Liv must deal with mothers who want the most convenient versions of their children, not the children they actually have. Men are allowed to push into both of their lives because they are told it’s their right. Crane writes of all these experiences with a sharpness that cuts deep into the heart of the reader.
The most brutal scene occurs when Mack’s teammates start mocking Dani, a lesbian player on a rival team. It’s not just the hatefulness of these comments that hurts; it’s the fact that they are coming from the people who are supposed to have Mack’s back the most — the people with whom they are supposed to share a sacred teammate bond. That kind of betrayal has the highest potential for hurt, and it forces readers to look fully into the ugly jaws of shame externalized and internalized homophobia create. In these moments, Liv becomes a place of refuge for Mack: “I simply wished Liv would, somehow, against all sense, all understanding of the world and how it works, choose me.”
As the novel progresses, the pressure of Mack’s college signing builds. Scouts come from around the country to watch Mack’s team play, joining stands full of people watching and passing their judgments. Part of being an athlete, especially on such a high level, is putting on a performance and being judged for that performance. As Mack puts it: “It occurred to me that most spectators only like athletes for what they give them: money, pride, excitement, and entertainment. Otherwise, they’ll write them off faster than the time it takes AI to shake a defender.”
Through Mack, we experience the pressure and devastation of letting your team down in front of a crowd. But on the other end of that devastation, there’s a euphoric high, an ability to become a basketball god. The feeling can be intoxicating. It’s one that’s easy to conflate with love.
The pressure, stress, and grief of Mack’s life push them into substance use, drinking and doing whatever drugs become available to them. Addiction so often fills the space where care is supposed to be. It finds people when they don’t have the tools to have peace within their bodies and lives. One of the most common misconceptions I’ve heard around young competitive athletes is that they’re unlikely to use substances, much less struggle with substance abuse. A large part of that misconception comes from the morality complex people have around substance use. Moral purity teaches us to look down on athletes who fall into addictive cycles instead of asking why they ended up there in the first place. The world responds with punitive measures instead of love, care, and curiosity, making it incredibly difficult for young, vulnerable athletes to get what they need.
Obviously, not every athlete falls into addictive cycles, but selling the narrative that aspiring D-1 athletes are unlikely to struggle with substance use ignores the pressures they experience in their daily lives. In high-level athletics, there’s a thin line between ambition and self-destruction. It’s a line Mack has had to walk ever since they decided they wanted to play D-1. We live in a world where athletes are told they have a narrow window of value. Burn bright until you burn out. The arena we’ve created doesn’t give young players a full view of what their life can be beyond their glory on the court. That’s something Mack has to seek out on their own.
This novel asks readers to look unflinchingly into the most brutal truths of life. We force people to mirror the systems that hurt them in order to survive. Love is far closer to violence than most of us are prepared to admit. Addiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum and never has. Greatness will never be a substitute for love.
In sharing these truths, the novel also invites us to expand our imagination of what the world can be. This story operates like a sign wave: The dip of tragedy is paired with the inverse possibility of what love can do for us in the face of that tragedy. Crane gives us all of this in a novel that’s vibrant and grimy and hot and poetic and aching. Though this novel is a love letter to basketball, you don’t have to love or even understand basketball to read it. Within these pages basketball isn’t just a sport; it’s a way of speaking to the expansiveness of desire and the human condition. Though the depths of that condition can so often feel like they are beyond language, Crane’s more than up for the job.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Gen Greer (she/her) is a dog lover, runner, and slasher enthusiast. Her work has appeared in Queerlings, Haunted Words Press, Black Moon Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find her looking for little tasks and on Instagram at @doloresneverlolita.
Sex/Life is a series all about the secret sexy business of couples, throuples, exes who still fuck for some reason, LDR darlings, polyculites, and any other kind of amorous grouping your perfect heart can fathom. We send them nosey questions, they record themselves answering them, and we transcribe that conversation for all of us to enjoy. All names have been changed and any identifying details removed.
Want to share the sex story of your relationship? Email [email protected] for details.
Riley is a 39 year-old dean who enjoys horseback riding, snowboarding, and her adorable 7 year-old son. Mae is 35, an avid runner who also teaches yoga and works in tech, and loves watercolor. They live in southern California, are both previously divorced, and have been together for two years (two-and-a-half, if you count the friend-zoning).
And this is how they fuck:
What was your sex life like when you first started dating?
Riley: Really hot. I don’t think that’s changed fundamentally, but there’s such an excitement at the start — exploring them with all that fun, sexy energy. Lots of late nights and early mornings. I was exhausted at work, but it was worth it.
Maybe the frequency has gone down, but the better we know each other and feel comfortable together, the better the sex is.
Mae: We check in about this a lot, which I love. I think there’s more variety, right? Even in terms of what we’re channeling. The emotion behind it.
Riley: Oh, yeah.
Mae: You know? I feel like in the beginning you’re insatiable.
Riley: Yeah. Lust.
Mae: And now we can just, you know, take our time. It’s evolved in a good way.
Riley: Agreed.
You don’t live together — how does that impact your sex life?
Riley: We were both recently divorced when we met. It was an interesting time in our lives, a lot of rebuilding and starting over. I have a son from a previous marriage, but after living closer to Mae for a while, the commute to his school and my work became too much. He needed to be near his friends and school community, which is 15 miles south of Mae. So due to my son, we’re taking our time with moving in together, being mindful about it. He’s a little guy with big feelings and it’s been kinda hard on him. So this transition has been underway for nearly a year, lots of moving and construction ups and downs. Plus, you love your space in Long Beach.
Mae: I do, I love my place in Long Beach. It’s everything I need: efficient, my projector to watch movies on, a balcony. It’s a nice, safe space.
Riley: I also feel like we do kind of live together, since we’re always together, right?
Mae: Correct.
Riley: So it’s kind of silly that you have a place, even though you love it.
Mae: Well, we get to live our single girl life there. It’s a nice crashpad, a deluxe apartment in the sky, where I’ve built my life and community. I think of us as in a little boat together, with our dogs, driving back and forth on the 405.
Riley: That’s how you know we love each other.
Mae: We pick each other up from LAX.
Riley: It’s really cute.
Mae: Yep. Even on a Thursday.
How has having a child impacted your sex life?
Mae: It’s just the nature of being a parent, that you have to put his needs first. And sometimes that means we get a little delayed!
Riley: This might be slightly off-topic, but I think it connects — my job also impacts things. I work in education, and it’s draining with the kids’ and parents’ needs. It’s like I’m pouring from my cup constantly, caring for other kids and then worrying about my own, and right now have a crazy commute. I often feel depleted, which’s unfair to you. And again, ‘cause he’s a little guy, I have to do a lot for him when he’s here: picking him up, managing his showers, making his dinner…
Mae: His oodles!
Riley: His oodles that he is obsessed with! So being a parent isn’t the only factor. I get really tired. I’m a sleepy girl, and is that because of my job or because I’m a Taurus? Not sure! [Laughs]
Mae: All that to say: she is eyes-closed by about eight o’clock.
Riley: Yeah. I’m so tired. His needs come first, so logistically, sometimes we can’t get it on because he’s around. But we do a good job of finding ways to be intimate, prioritizing that part of our relationship or acknowledging when it needs attention.
Mae: Yes. Sometimes we even just talk about affection, right? Like just the little touches when you pass by. It doesn’t even have to be very physically intimate. Like in the Esther Perel podcast when she says, “Foreplay begins after your last orgasm,” or something to that effect. We do sometimes look at the calendar and say we have to prioritize it. If we go too long, we get cranky and anxious, we need that reassurance. It’s just a moment of insecurity, but we need that reassurance. And sex is a good way to show, not tell.
Riley: Yeah, for sure.
Do you have a top/bottom dynamic?
Riley: Kind of yes, kind of no. Mae, you tend to like to be the top. But it’s maybe 55-45. You also like it when I take charge. I think in my previous relationships, I felt like I couldn’t be the top. I dated more masc-presenting people — and not that mascs can’t be bottoms, but these happened to be some pretty stone tops. So I got used to that. Part of why I like our relationship is we’ve uncovered a pretty intense top desire I have, and it’s fun for you too.
Mae: Yeah, I’d love to see you explore it! When we met, I felt like you preferred bottoming, but you just needed the chance to explore. I feel like sometimes it’s 60-40, 65-35. It depends.
Riley: I disagree with those numbers. [Laughs]
Mae: Wow. Okay. [Laughs] Either way, it’s not like it’s ever a short affair for us.
Riley: No.
Mae. I mean it’s not all night long, but we do take turns a couple times, we’re very switchy.
Do you feel like your sex drives are well matched?
Riley: Yes. Yes. Yes. For sure.
Mae: Can’t see me but I’m nodding yes.
Riley: Effusively. Yes. Both of us.
Mae: Thank goodness.
Riley: I know.
Mae: Because there’s no real way —on the internet when you’re online dating, which is how we met — to like, come out and talk about it. Some people can, but — oh Riley made a cringe face.
Riley: I know. I don’t, I don’t mean to be judgy, but! If I saw that on someone’s profile —
Mae: Maybe that’s just where we’re at culturally, and what our upbringings molded us into!
Riley: It’s just, it’s presumptive! Like, I’m just going on a date with you. We can talk about this and figure it out.
Mae: ‘Cause who knows, right? Like even as we were talking just now, you used to feel like you were a lot more bottomy, so if you had to advertise, it doesn’t even leave you room to grow or explore.
Riley: Right, and then it sort of locks you into a situation. So, I don’t know, I feel bad that it was judgy! It’s not how I meant it. But yeah, I think we both have healthy sex drives.
Mae: Mm-hmm!
Riley: And I’m glad they’re matched.
Are there things you like to do together during sex, or don’t like to do?
Mae: Riley won’t slap me in the face.
Riley: [Laughs] I need to clarify! I don’t like anything in the face, that feels too personal and violent. Mae can never hit me in the face — I have trauma from breaking my nose as a kid. But yeah, I will slap your ass or anything else you want. I did it so hard one time, your dog whined!
Mae: Yeah, that rattled my bones a little bit.
Riley: Well, you said harder.
Mae: I did [laughs], so wish granted! It was very consensual, to be clear.
Riley: I think that that’s kind of our only — or my only off-limits thing. And by proxy yours. But we’re pretty experimental and open minded.
Mae: I agree. What about toys?
Riley: I’m super basic, I just love that one vibrator of yours — the Mod, I think?
Mae: Oh my god, what an OG.
Riley: That thing is powerful. Which is the one you like? The little sucker one?
Mae: I guess it’s called a Womanizer. I hate the name! They gotta change it! They’d sell more with a rebrand. But yeah, it was recommended to me by my sister and my friend, and it’s something else.
Riley: Yeah, you definitely enjoy that one for sure. [Laughs] I also love, love, [hums triumphant reveal music]: The glass dildo.
Mae: The glass dildo, folks! A tip though, if you’ve never tried one: don’t take it in your carry-on, because under the TSA screen, it will look like water. It will look like liquid.
Riley: I don’t know, they can identify a dick.
Mae: They pull you aside. It’s so humiliating.
Riley: That’s the worst.
Mae: Do you remember — wasn’t it LAX? When we were coming back from Chicago.
Riley: Yes!
Mae: Chicago didn’t care. LAX decided to make an example of me. [Laughs] The TSA agent goes, Ma’am, is there an adult toy in here?
Riley: So awkward.
Mae: Then I go Yes, there is. Yeah. More than one!
Riley: [Laughs] Oh my God. You can’t take us anywhere.
Mae: The one thing I won’t travel with through TSA, ever — I’ve brought dildos and vibrators, but I will not bring handcuffs. [Laughs] I won’t bring bondage stuff. I don’t want to be deemed unfit to fly. And mine aren’t actual handcuffs, ’cause those are uncomfortable, even with that little fuzz layer. It’s like a piece of felt.
Riley: Ours are very comfy.
Mae: They’re true leather and fur-lined. It’s hot, you’re just like, being held.
Riley: Wait, what happened on the way to Europe?
Mae: Oh, no, it was leaving Portugal. The TSA agent wasn’t wearing gloves and touched the vibrator. I was like, “Did you not know what it was? Or are you a creep?” It made me uncomfortable that he wasn’t wearing gloves.
Riley: Yikes. I was just like, “Oh my God, get me on this airplane.”
Mae: Yeah.
Riley: Like, keep it for all we care!
What are some things you’d like to try during sex?
Riley: I’m so giggly talking about this. I feel like we’ve kind of tried a lot. I’m interested in one of the pain wands. The violent wands.
Mae: She won’t slap me in the face, but she’ll zap me.
Riley: Yeah, I’ll electrocute you. I just can’t slap you. We do light bondage? We’d have to take it to the level of like, what is it? Shibari?
Mae: You said you knew some, right? You mentioned that like, pretty early on. We’ve been a little busy.
Riley: We’ve been too busy with our toys and glass dildo and going to Europe, exactly. I think there isn’t much left, unless we wanted to bring other people into it. But you know how I feel about that. [Laughs]
Mae: Never.
Riley: It’s a hard no from me.
Mae: It’s in the contract.
Or try again?
Mae: I mean, the glass dildo became one of those.
Riley: I know! I just, I like, love that! I’m really on a kick. Maybe we need to take it easy on the glass dildo for a while. I need help. I feel like we could try anal again—
Mae: We do. Sometimes.
Riley: But it’s not actual anal. It’s like, a finger.
Mae: Anal lite. Anal adjacent.
Riley: Just a little button tap. I don’t know, Mae, is there anything you’d like to try again?
Mae: The Throne.
Riley: Ooh, the Throne.
Mae: So a few years ago, I was in Cancun with family under sad circumstances. It was a last hurrah for my Mom, and Riley ended up coming down for a few days. She wasn’t there just to make love to me, she was there to fuck me. She came to Cancun to be dirty and party. So we did, and Riley set up a room chair, put towels over it, and Riley set up a pillow for her knees on the marble floor.
Riley: [Laughs] You make me sound old! I know I’m the older one, but come on! I can’t kneel on that. Not for as long as I want to, anyways.
Mae: Even on carpet, that wouldn’t be a good time. You’d get raspberries. So then Riley proceeded to eat me out.
Riley: And you were watching the Cancun sunset.
Mae: It was after a long day at the pool, taking tequila shots. It was awesome. We hooked up, the toys came out, we moved to the bed. Later my sister and her husband were coming to meet us before dinner, and my sister called to say she was on her way — from just a few doors down — and we were like oh shoot, we need to put the toys away! So I rushed, took all the vibrators and everything away, washed them so quick, then we hear a knock. My sister takes two steps in and points at the throne.
We forgot it was there! It’s so obvious what it’s for!
Riley: Especially with the pillow in front.
Mae: My sister was like, Nice throne, totally called us out. I got a little embarrassed but we started laughing hysterically and she was like No don’t worry about it. I love that. Love that for you.
How important are orgasms to your sex life?
Riley: Before I met you, one or two orgasms was like “wow ok, I really went for it.” With you — it’s six plus. It’s crazy. We’ve unlocked a level I didn’t know was possible! It’s wild. But there’s never any pressure if it doesn’t happen.
Mae: Sometimes nothing does happen, and that’s okay.
Riley: I feel bad ’cause I have so many! They really do just keep coming. Literally. I keep coming.
Mae: [Laughs] One time, Riley — I’m not kidding — had an orgasm while she was orgasming. It was the wildest thing.
Riley: I really appreciate you saying that it’s okay if it doesn’t happen, ‘cause it matters to me that I’m at least trying to make sure you have a good time and feel good, even if you don’t orgasm. But it matters to me, and I hope that effort comes through.
Mae: It does. We differ in that way. I have some past sexual trauma, so it takes more for me to let go. It doesn’t always happen.
Riley: True, but I think you still do have them pretty often right?
Mae: Oh. To be clear, l get fucked within an inch of my life. I orgasm more with you than I ever have in my life, and more intensely, longer. The other night I spun off into another dimension.
Riley: I had to put my hand over her mouth because she was screaming so loud.
Mae: I didn’t even come to until your hand covered my mouth. I don’t even know where I went.
Riley: Hot though. I love that.
Mae: Oh, it was so intense and so good. We’ve discussed what if we physically can’t in the future, if one of us gets sick or something. It’s not all about that, there’s so many ways to show and experience intimacy.
Riley: Yeah. And I mean, this brings up kind of a broader question of — being queer, being a lesbian, defining what sex is outside of heteronormative sex, which is centered on penetration. What I consider sex you might not, or vice versa. We can fool around and then I’ll be like, okay, goodnight! And nobody’s mad.
What role does masturbation play in your sex life?
Riley: Not central, but I still masturbate. You?
Mae: Mm-hmm.
Riley: I love when we talk about it. It’s very hot to me when you tell me you what you were thinking about. Touching myself is good foreplay, too.
Mae: I agree. Masturbating while we’re having sex or when we’re apart and then telling each other about it builds momentum. It’s like it’s a tool for us.
Riley: Yeah. I’ve had exes who looked down on it, so it’s freeing that we’re open about it. I still have some shame around it, weirdly. Something I’m working through.
Mae: I’m here for it.
Riley: Thanks, baby. Also, and this is not a groundbreaking comment but, I think that it’s just so important to masturbate to understand what you like. It makes sex so much better.
Tell us about the most memorable sex you’ve had together.
Riley: We’ve tried to answer this question before.
Mae: The Orgasm-In-An-Orgasm was one of them.
Riley: Definitely.
Mae: I think the Throne… Oh my gosh. No, but we didn’t even tell you the other part of The Throne!
Riley: No, no, no. This was after. The Dolphin?
Mae:The Dolphin!
[HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER]
Riley: The Dolphin was not Throne day, that was the next morning.
Mae: Was that the next morning? Oh, it’s all blending together. It was such a whirlwind!
[MORE LAUGHTER]
Riley: Basically in Mexico, the next morning — as Mae said, I was there for 48 hours and I came to get down to business: tequila and sex. I don’t know what we were doing differently, but it was just so good.
Also, sidenote: Mae mentioned we went to Mexico for a really sad reason. I won’t get into it, but what matters is that we were long distance then. You were in Chicago dealing with a family situation, and I was still in California.
Mae: Correct.
Riley: We were only seeing each other once a month. This was our monthly visit, so there was a lot of tension to release! I missed you so much and being away was hard, and for a hard reason, too. So there was a part of me that knew I was leaving soon. Knowing I was leaving soon, I was anticipatorily sad, so we had some super hot sex and I don’t know what happened, but —
Mae: Riley squealed. Like—
Riley: Like Mariah-Carey-level.
Mae: Whistle tone.
Riley: Almost unreachable to human ears.
Mae: I guarantee older humans didn’t hear it. You were communicating with the dolphins. She was echolocating.
Riley: It was so crazy.
Mae: That was… yeah I don’t know that I wanna recreate that. [Laughs] It was wild. Every day’s an adventure for us. Not to say we don’t get into our routines — we know what we’re into at the moment and can get the job done.
Riley: Sometimes we just gotta be efficient about it.
Mae: Right, yes. But I think we’ve continued to evolve down to the detail, we keep exploring each other and seeing what feels good.
Riley: Wait, what was the question? Now I’m lost, thinking about it.
Mae: Memorable times!
Riley: Memorable times! Yeah, there’s so many, that’s why it’s hard to pick just one. I mean, visiting you in Chicago and just hanging out and like, sorry to your dad. [Laughs]
Mae: Jeez, yeah.
Riley: There’s just so much passion! We were just like, we couldn’t get enough of each other.
Mae: Well we missed each other! Our relationship has gone through a lot that’s not typical to experience early on. Our honeymoon wasn’t very long — but I’m glad I at least knew you as a friend before that.
Riley: Yeah, I friend-zoned Mae for a while—
Mae: Six months, to be clear.
Riley: That was a whole thing. [Laughs]
Mae: It was a whole thing. But that’s for a different… podcast.
Riley: Before we met, I was on kind of a slut spiral, if you will.
Mae: Oh, wow.
Riley: I think you were dating people more intentionally. I mean, you were like definitely having sex with people, but I wasn’t as judicious. I was leaning in to being single and dating.
Mae: That’s why she friend-zoned me: she just wanted to be a party girl.
Riley: That’s not true! But yeah, I decided I needed a break. [Laughs] I was like, I can’t anymore. I can’t date anyone. I need to center myself. Maybe be celibate for a while and do some yoga and reflect.
But I mean, sex is always good and, largely, having sex with other women, lesbians, queer people, is wonderful. I think what makes our relationship so good is the feedback loop. We have great sex, and because we have such great sex, our relationship is really good. And then because we’re so in love, we have really great crazy transcendental sex. So yeah. It’s special in that way.
Mae: Love you.
Riley: I love you too!
Sex/Life is a series all about the secret sexy business of couples, throuples, exes who still fuck for some reason, LDR darlings, polyculites, and any other kind of amorous grouping your perfect heart can fathom. You can join them by emailing [email protected]! (No writing experience necessary.)
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A series that gives readers a backstage pass into the sex lives of queer couples (and throuples, polycules, etc) around the world. To share your own story, email [email protected].
I’m in a new relationship where I’m trying really really hard not to repeat the patterns of my last relationship. The short version: I find it nearly impossible to talk about sex and ask for what I want. My sexual shame was not THE reason me and my ex broke up after two years together, but it certainly contributed to our issues. She did everything she could to create a safe environment for me and I just couldn’t do it.
Now I’m in a new relationship, have had some therapy, though I can’t afford to continue. And I’m having the same problems. I cannot talk about sex or ask for what I want sexually. It literally makes me break out in hives. I’d rather say nothing and keep having sex that is fine even if not exactly what I want. I don’t think I even deserve what I want if I can’t ask for it right? I’ve only been seeing my girlfriend for a few months and I’ve talked to her a bit about my talking about sex issues. She’s super kind and understanding but I just feel like it could create issues in the long run. I’m fine with her talking about what she likes and wants during sex but when it comes to myself I find it nearly impossible. Like I’m interested in some things I’ve never really had the courage to ask for like anal and stuff. But when I try to put it to words I shut down and get SWEATY it is not cute.
I’ve tried so many things. Closing my eyes while talking. Getting drunk (I know that’s a bad solution). I just can’t get there. I guess I’m just wondering if there’s any last ditch strategies anyone has or if anyone can relate or if I should just give up trying all together and accept that this is the way life has to be.
A:
Hi! First I just want to say, everyone deserves the sex they want to have, full stop. You shouldn’t punish yourself here. If talking about sex is too hard for you, that’s totally understandable — and relatable! Once upon a time, I really struggled here as well. I may not have had all the physiological side effects you describe, but it still felt like a total block. And I also sometimes relied on alcohol to ease me into these conversations. You’re right; it’s not a great or healthy solution by any means, but it’s an impulse I understand and do not judge you for.
It sounds like there could be some underlying trauma here. At the very least, there’s a heavy layer of shame. It’s good you’ve sought out therapy for this in the past, but I’m also sympathetic toward the fact that that is no longer financially viable, so I won’t push that as an option too much. But it does sound, of course, like some self-work needs to be done here but also like it has perhaps happened in some capacity already. As far as short term solutions go, I have an idea of something to try out: writing.
I did notice something about your letter: You wrote that you want anal. That’s specific! You wrote it! And submitted it to me, another person, to read. With also the understand that other people would read it. Sure, it’s anonymous and sure I’m not your partner, but that’s huge! You do know what you want or want to try, and you’re able to express it, just not verbally. I think we talk a big game about open and honest communication here in this advice column, but I think it’s easier said than done.
Hear me out: What if you tried writing down your desires? This can be an incredibly liberating practice, even if it’s just done privately. You don’t detail the kinds of things you’ve tried already, but if this isn’t one, give it a whirl. Keep a sex journal. Do it just for yourself at first. Write down what you want, what feels good, what you haven’t tried but want to. Explore that on the page and see how that feels.
Then, see if you’re able to let your girlfriend in through writing too. You could show her passages from your sex journal or writer her a letter or even write her an email. I’m serious! That may sound impersonal and awkward, but it doesn’t have to be. This was a strategy I used when I was younger when it came to talking about mental health with my parents and other people in my life. I could not do it verbally, but I could be super super open in a written form. I think having a conversation with your girlfriend ahead of time — not about sex itself but about the fact that you have things you want to express pertaining to sex over email/in a letter/etc — could lay safe groundwork to communicate in this slightly non traditional but still totally valid way.
I want you to be able to ask for what you want, because again, I think everyone deserves this. But if you have to find an alternative way to communicate, that’s totally fine, and I encourage you to at least try. Maybe this process will help you eventually be able to communicate verbally. But that also doesn’t have to be the end goal right away. The end goal should be you self-advocating for pleasure, however that might look for you!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
I was also going to suggest writing (especially after they named some specific desires in the letter). I too find it much easier to express myself in writing, also because it means I don’t have to be hyper-aware of my response (or my facial reactions) versus having an in-person conversation.
I know she already verbalizes them, but writing can also be a way for your girlfriend to share desires or interests or preferences… it doesn’t have to feel like a one-way, like you are unloading some big secret you’ve kept locked up.
Maybe reframing this not as a problem to be solved but as finding new/different ways to communicate about this will take some of the pressure off (it seems like it is weighing on you a lot, LW). And I wonder if there a way to make it feel more playful? Like, if writing things out in a narrative like a letter feels too overdetermined, maybe you two can text about it while not being in the same space? Or leave little notes for each other and pass them back and forth?
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ooooo passing notes back and forth is a great idea!
My younger self really relates to this question. I think writing is a great idea and it did help me, but there were some other things I found helpful too. I think the biggest one was spend time listening to other people talk about sex in open and joyful ways. Podcasts were really helpful there. They gave me a broader sense of the range of desires and relationships to desire that are possible for people, and modeled a kind of comfort I didn’t have. I tended to pick ones that covered quite a wide range (mostly advice to start with), so they included but didn’t focus on things I was interested in myself, and, most importantly, where I enjoyed the hosts and the energy and perspective they brought. It wasn’t a quick fix at all, but over time I got more comfortable hearing the words and then speaking them as well. Eventually, I even started listening where my partner could hear too and we could pause and comment, thus bringing things up in a neutral way.
I also wonder if there are smaller things you could share with your partner around sex that might help you move towards sharing more. Even things as small as “hang on, I need a drink of water,” or “I liked that,” or “more lube,” or “I feel so shy right now” are part of talking about sex and allowing your needs and wants to take up space. Notice if there are things you are already comfortable (or almost comfortable) saying, and start adding more from that comfort line rather than feeling like you have to share the scariest things right away. It’s okay to keep those close until you’re actually ready. I hope though that you can keep on moving towards more comfort and agency in your sex life, and it seems like you’re already taking some big steps to do that.
When Elon Musk changed Twitter to X, I vowed not to honor his chosen name. Now, nearly two years later, I’ve accepted that I was in denial. Twitter is gone. All that’s left is X.
The internet is broken. This is abundantly clear to me not only as a queer person but as the editor for one of the few remaining online publications not owned by a media giant. While I finally stopped “tweeting” from my personal account last month, it hasn’t been an easy platform to abandon. The mix of bots and subscribers under almost every post say horrid things or they comment @grok?? asking Elon’s AI bot to give them misinformation in exchange for poisoning the air. Every time I’ve logged on over the past two years, it’s made me feel terrible — and not in the jokey way we used to describe. And yet, it’s still the largest social media platform to share written work. Even in its current form, it boosts traffic for this site, getting our hard work out to readers new and old. I’ve stopped posting from my personal account, but the Autostraddle account still plans to use that terrible place to share our articles. There’s nowhere else to go.
GLAAD’s 2025 Social Media Safety Index was released this morning and their findings are brutal. Using their Platform Scorecard, GLAAD’s team assessed X, Meta (Instagram, Facebook, Threads), TikTok, and YouTube. The only company to receive over 50 (out of 100) was TikTok coming in at a whopping 56. However, as GLAAD notes, “TikTok should show greater transparency around the wrongful removal and demonization of LGBTQ-related content.” Is it the safest social media platform because it cares about queer people? Or is it the safest social media platform because it attempts to remove queer people altogether? How does it affect queer people if the only platform not full of hate speech encourages them to write things like le$bean to avoid shadowbans and forces sex workers to call it corn?
And yet, it’s understandable why the puritanical TikTok might be more appealing than Meta and YouTube after both companies’ recent policy changes. Facebook and Instagram received scores of 45 with Threads receiving a 40, stating that the company “revised its ‘Hateful Conduct’ policy this year to expressly allow and encourage hate, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTQ people.” YouTube, with a score of 41, made a similar change removing “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristic groups. GLAAD notes, “The company has claimed that the policy has not changed, however it is an objective fact that the gender identity protection is no longer expressly present.”
These policy shifts are part of an overall cultural shift as the pathetic creeps who run these tech companies and our world grovel at the feet of Donald Trump and his colleagues. Project 2025 explicitly called for “deleting the terms of sexual orientation and gender identity” and that’s what these platforms are starting to embrace — while their supporters take a more confrontational approach with their own chosen terms. Some of these men are probably just trying to earn favor from the current administration, others are likely thrilled to no longer have to pretend to care about us, either way the results are the same.
As an advocacy organization, GLAAD includes recommendations in their reports, recommendations that are likely to be ignored. They also state they are expanding their reach “by providing stakeholder guidance to additional tech and AI companies.” It helps no one to be cynical, so I feel genuine gratitude toward GLAAD for continuing this fight within the system. At the very least, it can’t hurt for these companies to know they are being watched even if it merely provides an annoyance as they march along toward their larger goals.
But as a journalist, a queer person, and someone who has been very online since my days as a lonely closeted teen on random forums, I’m unsure how to meet this moment. I feel like I’m in mourning for the virtual spaces that have provided community, education, and entertainment for most of my life. I’m grateful that many of these spaces have since led to IRL connections I can now lean on, but I feel sad for younger generations who won’t have that same opportunity. And, to be honest, I don’t know how to get all of you to read pieces like this.
It’s not just the social media platforms. Google is broken too. AI has made the search engine much less effective and it buries useful journalism, challenging art, and important information. I love the idea that we can go back to a more analog world, but unless people are about to start subscribing to daily newspapers, I don’t see how that’s possible.
What the GLAAD report makes clear is it’s not as easy as simply wading through the bullshit to continue using these social media platforms. The plethora of hate speech would take a toll on those with even the strongest constitutions. And their proliferation of misinformation is ensuring that the hate spreads even further.
For many years, these social media platforms have profited off of agitation and conflict. But, for awhile, their most horrible instincts were balanced with people who made it feel worth it. I feel that less and less. I still check Instagram sometimes, I still do my nightly scroll of animal videos, hot takes, and hot people on PG-rated TikTok, and I’ll even scratch the itch to tweet on Bluesky, the social media equivalent of watching MSNBC with my mother. Alas, none of this feels worth it or sustainable. And none of this is going to get people to read this article about queer people in international long distance relationships under Trump that I spent weeks reporting on and that a few years ago would’ve been shared widely on the app formerly known as Twitter.
So what’s the answer? I guess GLAAD will continue fighting for these tech companies to consider me a human being. Meanwhile, I’ll try to remember that back in the day connecting with even a hundred people on Tumblr felt like a miracle.
Read the entirety of GLAAD’s 2025 Social Media Safety Index here.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Tumblr and Autostraddle are the only good places on the internet.
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I’m so glad you guys are still here! Not as wide or useful as sharing on twitter but i drop yall in the group chats all the time
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Thank you for the summation of the report.
I think Meta has adopted similar censorship to TikTok recently. Instagram and Facebook are the only platforms mentioned in this article that I use regularly but I see a lot of people on Instagram using TikTok-style abbreviations and codes like the the ones you mentioned. That might just be because a lot of it is reels that they’re cross-posing to TikTok, though.
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Yeah it’s bleak for sure. I don’t post on social media anymore, but I do still check Instagram and a few Facebook groups I’m in. As a mostly housebound disabled person, I don’t have IRL community to fall back on.
I’m sorry it’s so rough in terms of Autostraddle getting traffic. I realise I’m an outlier, but I visit the site daily via desktop and read as much as my energy allows. Am I imagining things, or were there plans for an AS app a while ago? Seems like a good way to reach people directly, though I’m undoubtedly ignorant when it comes to the logistics of such an operation.
A minor point, and I know it’s part of the engagement ‘game’, but I have to say I find it depressing when AS’s Instagram posts sometimes veer into the realm of rage/click-bait. It especially feels uncool when people’s advice questions are cut down to the point of misrepresenting the writer.
One of the last Sunday mornings I showed up for altar server duties, a young, newly-ordained priest was giving that morning’s mass as part of a trial-run to see if he’d be the one to replace our parish priest. Aside from meeting this Father, the time before mass was fairly normal: The rest of the altar servers and I showed up an hour early to make all the necessary preparations, we put on our albs, and Travis and I fought for 10 minutes about which one of us would take on the coveted responsibility of ringing the bells. Then, mass proceeded as it always did — that is until we reached the homily. Perhaps emboldened by the liberal-appearing atmosphere of South Florida or maybe hoping he’d finally find a parish with similar views as his own, the new priest encouraged the congregation I’d known since I was born to welcome gay and lesbian people into the arms of the Church just as they are, without forcing them to change.
No one there knew, not even the old parish priest who took my confession every two weeks, that I was harboring a lascivious secret. For two years prior to the new priest’s homily, I’d spent every moment I had alone in my family’s living room fast forwarding our VHS of Alien to the part where Sigourney Weaver’s Lieutenant Ripley strips down to nothing but too-low white panties and a white tank top that I wanted so badly to be see-through. I wasn’t sure I was I gay because I barely understood what that meant, but I knew I wanted her in the same way my middle school friends wanted the Backstreet Boys and Freddie Prinze, Jr. And I knew that, at least once a week, I was sinning boldly and unrepentantly right in front of God.
As the new priest delivered his message, I kept my composure. I didn’t want anyone to know I felt entirely relieved — even justified — about who I was becoming and the deviant behavior I couldn’t stop myself from repeating.
When mass ended, I stayed quiet as the other altar servers speculated over whether or not the new priest was a “fag” while we disrobed and cleaned up the sacristy. In the parish hall where they served coffee and donuts for free after mass every Sunday, I listened as members of the congregation gossiped about the new priest. They questioned his authority and his interpretation of the scripture. They made comments about the way he talked, the way he walked back and forth across the altar as he spoke to us, the way his smile never seemed to diminish, and how he held his coffee. They joked that he “must be Dutch” (because at the time, the Netherlands was the only place where same-sex marriage was legal). They said he wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to serve as our parish priest. They asked each other what God would make of his homily.
I went home and told my mom I wasn’t going to sign up for serving duties anymore after I finish out my schedule at the end of that month, and she was too delighted by the fact that she didn’t have to wake up extra early anymore to ask me why.
It wasn’t the first time I heard openly anti-gay comments at church. But I believed the new priest when he said it was possible we were misunderstanding what scripture was trying to tell us, when he said we were all God’s creations and it wasn’t up to us to decide who was made correctly and who wasn’t. Not just because it excused the intimacy I was sharing with Lt. Ripley when I had the house to myself, but because something within myself was begging me to trust that my nature was fully in God’s purview. And the new priest’s homily finally granted me permission.
The new priest never got invited back to deliver another homily, and I spent the next decade distancing myself from the Church, making jokes about my (minor) religious trauma to my friends who share similar experiences. I became the kind of person that my congregation feared most.
When we first meet the Gemstone siblings in the very first episode The Righteous Gemstones, they are grieving the recent loss of their beloved matriarch and verbally ripping each other to shreds. In the show, the Gemstone family has a significant presence in the South Carolina Evangelical Christian community, throughout the U.S., and around the world. The patriarch Eli (John Goodman) and his late wife Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles) built their ministry, televangelist, and megachurch empire from nothing while raising their three children, Jesse (Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam Devine). Aimee-Leigh was hoping for children who were as equally devoted to the Lord as she was, but they ended up becoming the embodiment of some of the greedier tendencies Eli tries so hard to tamp down. Before we’re even shown exactly what makes the siblings such “bad” Christians, their brief interactions with each other prove they are some of the most hilariously entitled and egotistical characters ever put to screen.
Jesse is the clueless yet cocksure older brother who, with the help of his “smoke show” wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman), is priming himself to become his father’s “rightful” successor despite not having the leadership qualities (or intelligence). Judy is a stereotypical middle child constantly vying for equal responsibility in the family’s empire, but she’s also overtly sexual, can “rip” better than her two brothers ever can, and has a dirtier mouth than all of the characters combined. And Kelvin, the youngest Gemstone, doesn’t quite know where he fits in with his siblings or with his parents’ church at large though he’s certain he deserves to reap the benefits of the Gemstone name.
In that first episode, Eli, Jesse, and Kelvin are returning from a mission trip to Chengdu, China where they managed to baptize 5,000 people even though they completely screwed up the baptism event. It’s obvious from the beginning, especially to knowing eyes, that something is off about Kelvin, something is a little fruity about him even, but no one in his family seems to pay much attention to that. From their private airport, Judy and a caravan of security guards take Eli, Jesse, and Kelvin back to the Gemstones’ sprawling compound where Eli and each of the siblings has their own gigantic estate. At Eli’s estate, he’s greeted by a team of housekeepers and cooks who seem genuinely happy he’s home. Jesse arrives at his estate and is met at the front of his house by Amber, who embraces him, congratulates him on the success of the mission trip, and calls him her “King.”
Kelvin returns to what we think is an empty home with a look of sadness on his face. As he’s settling in to being back, he’s startled by Keefe (Tony Cavalero), an ex-Satanist who Kelvin converted to Christianity and subsequently took under his wing. From the moment the two set eyes on each other, there’s palpable tension between them. Kelvin and Keefe have a brief conversation, then as Keefe is explaining he needs to go home to soak in a “very hot” tub for a while, Kelvin tries to convince him to stay to play video games and eat Pixie Stix all night.
Knowing and loving Danny McBride’s other HBO projects, Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, I expected this church family story would, at some point, be imbued with as much homoeroticism as McBride’s other work. But I can’t say I entertained the possibility of him and his showrunners writing a queer character into any of his shows, especially this one about the absurdity and hypocrisy of bourgeois, Southern Evangelical Christianity. As Kelvin and Keefe stumbled over their words and then awkwardly hugged as they said “night night” to one another, I was gripped with curiosity and a stream of emotions — both celebratory and anxious — about what they might have in store for Kelvin and Keefe in the future.
Aside from the fact that they’re both Christian religions, Catholicism and Evangelicalism are more culturally and theologically dissimilar than they are alike. Catholicism, for its part, seems to sometimes forget there’s also an Old Testament in the Bible. It focuses heavily on the role of Mary in Jesus’s life and his eventual sacrifice and has a huge pantheon of saints who work as spiritual messengers and providers to whoever invokes them. Within Catholic lore, it’s the only church that was actually started by Jesus Christ himself before his death when he told his twelve apostles how to carry on his work and appointed Saint Peter as his successor. Meanwhile, Evangelical Christianity is the culmination of several theological movements that were sparked by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Although they share a deep commitment to hierarchy and church law, the structure of the Catholic Church feels more governmental in its approach while Evangelicalism is organized like a series of intramural sports leagues following their own rules and regulations wherever they are. Regardless, they do share one important belief: Acting on homosexual desires is one of the gravest sins a person can commit.
In my household and in the Catholic communities we belonged to, anti-queerness (and anti-transness) wasn’t a pillar of our Christianity in the way it’s become the number one issue for far-right Christo-fascists since 2016. Queerness was discussed in my Catholic catechism classes and, eventually, in my Catholic high school theology classes occasionally, though it was mostly brought up as a reminder that being queer wasn’t part of “God’s plan” for us. But that knowledge, combined with the often open and excusable homophobia of the early 2000s, was enough to keep a specter of shame and guilt hanging over me as I got older and realized I probably wasn’t going to be able to keep my burgeoning queer sexuality contained. The new priest’s homily offered me another perspective, but it would take a few more years before I could fully integrate his worldview into my own.
For the first two and half seasons of The Righteous Gemstones, that specter haunts Kelvin in an even more intense manner than I experienced. Being a Gemstone means you’re expected to uphold the values — at least publicly — of Evangelicalism, and Kelvin knows this. Similar to what I experienced, anti-queerness isn’t explicit in the show save for a few times where people are homophobic and quickly reprimanded for it, such as whenever Jesse’s son Pontius (Kelton DuMont) uses the word “faggot” and is quickly reminded that Jesse has “homosexual friends” who wouldn’t appreciate the use of that word. Anti-queerness isn’t present in their sermons or in their private discussions about religion as a family. No one is telling Kelvin he has to stay in the closet. And yet he knows from growing up in the Evangelical community his parents constructed that he doesn’t have the choice to explore his feelings.
This approach is not particularly shocking to anyone who’s engaged with McBride’s work in the past. But given the state of Christianity in this country over the last 10 years, the choice to present Kelvin’s dilemma absent of any explicit anti-queerness from his family and community gave the show an opportunity to interrogate (and satirize) this issue in a unique — and often heartening — way over the course of its four seasons.
Throughout the majority of the first three seasons, we watch as Kelvin hilariously and misguidedly attempts to figure out his role in the family’s business and to find outputs for his ever-intensifying crush on Keefe. The first season focuses heavily on getting Jesse and the rest of the family out of harm’s way from a blackmailing operation, but throughout, Kelvin’s ability to assist Jesse is heavily dependent on Keefe being part of their plans. It solidifies Kelvin and Keefe’s relationship in ways only serious family drama can. Keefe’s integration into the family — as Kelvin’s closest friend, of course — is much smoother than Judy’s fiance BJ (Tim Baltz). I wouldn’t call Judy and BJ’s relationship heteronormative but in the eyes of the Gemstone family, it’s more appropriate than a queer relationship and yet they never treat BJ with the kind of respect they do Keefe. Even if they are a little suspicious of what Kelvin and Keefe’s closeness might mean, they don’t interrogate him or chastise him for it.
When the second season begins, something has shifted in Kelvin and he seems truly ready to stake his unique claim in the Gemstone empire. His new project “The God Squad” — a weight-lifting focused ministry that pokes fun at the tenets and traditions of Muscular Christianity — gives him the opportunity to be in charge of a ministry he “invented” and to hang out scantily-clad with Keefe and other jacked men all day. As “The God Squad” grows larger and takes on more dedicated members, the power of running this ministry and the constant repression of his feelings for Keefe turn him into an absurd caricature of himself. This culminates in him having to prove his strength to the Squad (in the most ridiculous way possible) and realizing his and Keefe’s efforts are more successfully utilized in the Youth Ministry where they began.
That’s where we pick up with Kelvin and Keefe in the third season: running the Youth Ministry and an anti-porn, anti-premarital sex project called “Smut Busters” where they go to local sex shops to buy out all their products and have them destroyed. Here again, we see Kelvin and Keefe coming up with schemes to try to perpetually prove their “innocence” — how can anyone think they’re gay (and more specifically, gay for each other) when they’re always trying to prevent people around them from acting on “impure” thoughts? Much like The God Squad, the Smut Busters project comes to an immediate halt after parents of the young people in the Youth Ministry express concern for what Kelvin and Keefe are doing and confront the men about some “rumors” that have been swirling around regarding their relationship. This is the first time in the whole series either of them are shown their facade isn’t working as well as they think it is. And given that it’s the parents of their “students” leading the charge here, it’s also the first time we see the series calling direct attention to how Christianity is being weaponized in our real world.
The Smut Busters project is canceled and it leaves Kelvin and Keefe in limbo, trying to make sense of how they’ve failed to hide themselves and where they’re supposed to go from there. At the end of season three, Kelvin and Keefe finally give into the feelings by sharing an impassioned kiss in front of the Gemstone siblings and their partners. And the family reacts not with disdain, disgust, or anger, but with brief, celebratory glee. By the end of the series finale, Kelvin and Keefe have taken their rightful spot among the rest of the couples on the show when they receive a warm welcome as they join their family on the compound to take turns driving Jesse’s monster truck. Eli gives them a thumbs up, the final seal of approval the two of them wished for so badly, and Aimee-Leigh’s ghost looks in on everyone with a smile on her face.
There are two actual years and seemingly two TV years between where season three leaves off and where season four begins. Kelvin and Keefe are, of course, still together, only now they’re running a ministry called PRISM, specifically designed to help integrate LGBTQ+ people into the Gemstone’s version of Evangelicalism. PRISM, unlike so many of the other Gemstone family church businesses, is actually raking in cash through their PRISM-edition Bibles and high levels of attendance at their services. For the most part, it appears that the rest of the Gemstone church community has embraced Kelvin and Keefe’s relationship, as well as their work with PRISM. There are no protests, no snide comments, no demands to stop the forward-thinking progressivism of the church. In fact, Kelvin is nominated by a society of regional Christians for a yearly prize called “Top Christ-Following Man of the Year.” And this is where this uproariously funny, mostly unserious show does some of its most important work.
Given the success of PRISM and Kelvin’s nomination, you can imagine how little the Evangelical community-at-large, outside of the Gemstone churches, wants to ride this wave of change happening right in front of them. A rival megachurch pastor, Vance Simkins (Stephen Dorff) — who, funnily enough, also gives off closeted Christian vibes — simply can’t handle this new, more open-minded version of Christianity the Gemstones are selling, and he takes it upon himself to try to bring down Kelvin. He embarrasses Kelvin on TV during a “Top Christ-Following Man” debate, claims that Kelvin’s nomination is an example of tokenism, and then takes his condemnation even further by insisting that Kelvin shouldn’t have been nominated in the first place, what with homosexuality being against God’s law and all.
If these events were to happen in the reality of 2025, I’d imagine they’d go something like this: Kelvin’s family would insist he drops out of the race, he’d be forced to go back into some version of the closet, and PRISM would come to a swift end. But in the Gemstones’ world, the opposite happens. Kelvin’s siblings — particularly Jesse, who is forced to overcome his jealousy regarding Kelvin’s nomination in the first place — rally around Kelvin, insist that he stay in the running, and take Simkins down once and for all. On the nominees’ “Night of Testimony” that leads to open voting by the faceless regional Christian community of South Carolina and beyond, Kelvin delivers a testimony that brought me right back to the feelings I had when I heard that new priest’s homily:
Truth. You see, that’s actually what I want to talk about tonight. See, I was the youngest member of my family to become a preacher…at age 12. They said I was special, but I just felt different. I spent my whole life trying not to be. Until I realized…God sees the real me. In fact, he made the real me. And if the real me is good enough for God, then it’s good enough for everyone. Different is awesome, the proof of God’s work, the range of his talents. So I came here tonight not to grovel for accolades but to tell the truth about who I am and what I’m about. My name is Kelvin Gemstone. And I’m a… a different kind of man. A beautiful man. A gay Top Christ Following Man. And if that’s not good enough for this award, then I don’t need it.
It’s an incredible moment for the series, only bested by the series finale concluding with a beautiful wedding ceremony on the family’s compound for Kelvin and Keefe, with Eli officiating their union in front of everyone they love and, really, God himself. But before we even get there, both Jesse and Eli manage to harass and embarrass Vance Simkins out of their Christian community altogether — a defeat reminding us that the real Christians, the real followers of Jesus’s teachings, shouldn’t and can’t allow the dogmatic bigots to keep their stranglehold over the word and will of God. With these final parts of Kelvin and Keefe’s storyline, McBride and his team provide an exhilarating funhouse mirror to the way Christianity is operating in our society. Kelvin and Keefe’s story could’ve gone anywhere and the jokes still would’ve flowed. But it didn’t, it went here, to a place of complete acceptance and — more importantly — unfettered jubilation in the face of a vocal and powerful minority of people who wish nothing more than for queer and trans people to disappear out of public life forever.
In a show about how “bad” and hypocritical Evangelical Christians (and Christians, in general) can be when they’re given as much power and authority as the Gemstones, McBride and his team made bigotry the ultimate sin. This was the one infraction in the eyes of God that you can’t easily be forgiven for and it helped bring to life an imagining of the way things could and should be in the church and in our culture. Like the new priest I met shortly before I stopped going to church forever, The Righteous Gemstones uses Kelvin and Keefe’s relationship to implore everyone to think more broadly about what it looks like to truly be faithful. You can have your God, you can have your church, but you should listen to him, too. You should love everyone as he loves you. You should trust that he knows exactly what he’s doing. You should believe we’re all here because he made us this way. If what the Bible says is true, you won’t get to heaven any other way.
All four seasons of The Righteous Gemstones are now streaming on Max.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Stef Rubino is a writer, community organizer, competitive powerlifter, and former educator from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They're currently working on book of essays and preparing for their next powerlifting meet. They’re the fat half of the arts and culture podcast Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, and you can read some of their other writing in Change Wire and in Catapult. You can also find them on Twitter (unfortunately).
Loved this summary and loved this show!! I was so pleasantly surprised with how much work the final season did – I was whacking my partner in the arm as the show approached the engagement. So good!
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Thank you so much for reading! This is for sure one of my favorite shows ever, and I was so damn pleased with how this final season went down. Caught myself tearing up during Aimee-Leigh’s narration in the end of the final episode.
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Thanks for this great article and summary of their relationship! I found Keefe and Kelvin quite healing and authentic too as a fellow queer person from a religious background. So I appreciate your own authenticity in sharing that perspective.
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Thank you for reading! It truly was such a great way to navigate this storyline. I’m so hyped we got to have this from a show that was already so damn great.
The 78th Cannes Film Festival begins today and, like many cinephiles world-wide, I’ll be observing from afar as some of the best new movies — and some tragic disappointments — make their debuts. I’ll also be on the look out for any lesbian films.
This year, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s Honey Don’t plays Out of Competition and Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water plays in the Un Certain Regard section. But I’m also expecting some films In Competition to be queer. See, the artsier the film festival, the more likely a movie that’s not marketed as a Lesbian Film™ will in fact be a lesbian film. Or at least have some homoeroticism. There are so many ways for movies to be queer that don’t fit into our cultural idea of what counts as LGBTQ+ cinema.
While we wait to hear what this year brings, I decided to go back through history and rank every lesbian movie that’s played in competition at Cannes. I first put this list together last year but have expanded it with films from last year and some films I missed.
NOTE: I use lesbian movie to basically mean any movie about or featuring queer women. As I just said, a lot of French movies are randomly a bit gay, so if I missed anything on this list, let me know!
I think it’s so beautiful that the bar has been raised (lowered?) for bad lesbian cinema at Cannes. Powerful stuff.
34. The Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)
Not even predatory lesbian Jena Malone can save this one for me…
33. La Pirate (dir. Jacques Doillon, 1984)
Jane Birkin and her brother play lovers and that might not even be the craziest thing about this movie. But bonkers doesn’t always equal great! And apparently director Jacques Doillon is a violent creep so this is an easy one to skip.
This has its defenders and maybe I need to rewatch. As I said in my review, I just expected even more blasphemy from Verhoeven.
31. Love Songs (dir. Christophe Honoré, 2007)
I love a throuple movie and this musical is fun enough in a French filled with grief sort of way.
30. Thieves (dir. André Téchiné, 1996)
Hot queer mom philosophy professor Catherine Deneuve makes this worth a watch even if its fractured heist tale doesn’t quite come together in the end.
Catherine Deneuve and Laurence Côte in Thieves
29. Paris, 13th District (dir. Jacques Audiard, 2021)
While certainly better than his other film on this list — I’ll credit co-screenwriter Céline Sciamma for that — this movie’s weakest plot line is its gay one due to a very baffling portrayal of sex work. Worth watching for Lucie Zhang and I wish they’d just let Noémie Merlant be gay with her instead.
28. Basic Instinct (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1992)
This one has been reclaimed by the queers for a reason, but it’s still maybe my least favorite of Verhoeven’s classics.
27. House of Tolerance (dir. Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
A stylish and bleak portrait of the economics of sex work. I admire the form and intent — as well as the great cast — but I can’t help think Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls does it better and with more subtlety.
26. Replay (dir. Catherine Corsini, 2001)
Years before Catherine Corsini made the sensual and romantic Summertime, she made this twisted tale of a toxic friendship/relationship. I kind of love it even though I’ve maintained some objectivity with its placement here.
25. The Nun (dir. Jacques Rivette, 1966)
Starring French film icon Anna Karina, this is a properly dour portrait of Catholicism with a range of repressed, manipulated, and/or sinister nuns, including one horny lesbian.
24. Symptoms (dir. José Ramón Larraz, 1974)
Like Psycho for cis lesbians. Do with that what you will.
23. Crush (dir. Alison Maclean, 1992)
An unpleasant film repulsed by its own eroticism, a sickening swirl of guilt and trauma and abuse. But also starring a very hot Marcia Gay Harden as a bisexual nightmare.
Marcia Gay Harden and Caitlin Bossley in Crush
22. The Divide (dir. Catherine Corsini)
Another film from Catherine Corsini, this one follows a bickering lesbian couple stuck at the emergency room on the first day of the Yellow Vest Protests. It’s like what if a TV medical drama was about the gap between bourgeois liberals and angry populists.
Part drama, part action movie, part real-life horrorshow, this is a striking work of postcolonial rage that features Sônia Braga as a very cool lesbian doctor.
19. Blue is the Warmest Color (dir. Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
For some, this movie would be at the bottom. For others, at the top. I’m putting it in the middle!
18. Clouds of Sils Maria (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2014)
Finally, a movie that understands the homoerotic tension that can exist when running lines with an actor. And also when Juliette Binoche is your boss. (I imagine.)
17. Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
I think this is among Almodóvar’s most underrated films. It may be a bit fractured, but its many pieces are divine.
16. Another Way (dir. Károly Makk, 1982)
This list is filled with some very bleak movies, but this one is really worth the misery.
15. BPM (Beats Per Minute) (dir. Robin Campillo, 2017)
And speaking of misery, this portrait of AIDS activism in France doesn’t shy away from the pain of the moment, but it also finds hope in political solidarity… and dancing at the club.
Adèle Haenel in BPM (Beats Per Minute)
14. Maps to the Stars (dir. David Cronenberg, 2014)
It’s been ten years. We now all agree this is great, right?
13. Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2022)
Kelly Reichardt loves people with such frustration and depth. This movie fills my soul as an artist and a person trying my best.
Hot take: This is my favorite Yorgos Lanthimos movie. And, yes, it counts for this list due to the sex cult.
11. Beyond the Hills (dir. Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
This an exorcism story grounded in reality — the only devils are the Christians who confuse queerness with possession. A devastating real-life horror movie.
It’s pretty fucking cool that two of the last four Palme d’Or winners were queer movies directed by women! Even cooler that they’re both masterpieces.
8. Crash (dir. David Cronenberg, 1996)
A movie that is at once completely visceral and completely intellectual. I think about it all the time. I feel about it all the time.
7. The Inheritance (dir. Márta Mészáros, 1980)
I don’t know if the homoeroticism here qualifies it for this list, but I’m including it because Márta Mészáros is one of the most underrated filmmakers of all time and this is one of her masterpieces. The best narrative Holocaust movie ever made.
Lili Monori and Isabelle Huppert in The Inheritance
There are many ways for a film to be radical. Within the subgenre of lesbian cinema, a romantic period piece about two cis white women may be an unlikely recipient of the word. But from the unique voice of Céline Sciamma, this is an explosive film, a reinvention of cinematic language through a uniquely lesbian gaze. It’s a masterpiece that grows richer with every passing year, every viewing, every time one of its images crosses my mind.
Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
RIP to anyone who decides anatomy of a fall on a gay data solely based on the fact that it’s on the list XD that being said Portrait of a Lady on Fire changed my relationship to art so, you are correct.
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Nothing better for a gay date movie than flirting with a woman and then (not?) killing your husband.
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love Blue is the Warmest Color positioned as the ultimate vers
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Hi Drew,
I’ve been reading autostraddle for a longtime and never commented on anything before, but reading that a movie from Jacques Doillon is in this list without any warning whatsoever was a bit alarming to me.
As a French cinephile working in the industry, that reads the news, there has been a huge opening of speech for the last few months. The actress Judith Godrèche – but also others, like Isild Le Besco – started openly speaking for the 1st time about what they lived as child-actresses who have been seriously abused by directors. One of those directors is Jacques Doillon, you can find a Variety article about it: https://variety.com/2024/film/global/judith-godreche-rape-complaint-jacques-doillon-1235902019/
It would be much appreciated if you didn’t “promote” his work. I’m not saying this in an accusing or condenscending way, as I know that it’s kinda recent news and maybe too niche to reach everyone in the world. But it feels like there is a huge French cinema- and others – metoo comeback since the beginning of the year, and it has been both apalling (to see any form of abuse so systematically anchored) and amazing (to watch – mostly women – speak openly about what they’ve kept hidden for so long and how it feels like most people want change). There is really no more place for directors like Jacques Doillon in any “top” list whatsoever, but especially on a website that talks so much about women rights, film culture etc.
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I had no idea, so thank you for letting me know! For what it’s worth this isn’t a top list, but a ranking of every lesbian movie to play in competition at Cannes. Since the movie is at the bottom, safe to say I wouldn’t promote the film even separate from the director’s violent behavior. But I’ll still add a note!
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Thank you Drew! I understand it’s a ranking and trying to be exhaustive. But I’m actually in Cannes right now and it still such a vibrant subject that I had to let you know.
If you want to add another one, I believe Heart + Knife was in Official Selection as well? which is probably much more enjoyable either way :)
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Omg I can’t believe I forgot Knife+Heart! Thank you!
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Seeing them in a shared list like this has me thinking; would I have put The Handmaiden above Carol? Even though i LOVE Carol? Maybe!
Excited to watch my way thru the top ten or so!
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Paris, 13th District
Julieta
Shrek 2 (jk)
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I forgot about the lesbianism in Julieta! I love that movie.
And I’ll be sure to watch Paris, 13th District ASAP!
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Oh, and The Divide/La Fracture (2021) is about divorced lesbian exes fighting during a yellow vest demonstration
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Some more Cannes competition titles with lesbian elements:
Beyond the Hills
Bacarau
Oh, Mercy!
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You’re the best!! Thank you!!
I shall be updating this as I watch.
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Thank you again for all your suggestions! Super helpful for this year’s update. The only one I couldn’t watch was Oh Mercy (for some reason it’s not currently available in the US or Canada??) but I’ll try to track it down before next year.
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Yay! Thanks for the update!
Also, in competition this year, ‘The Little Sister’ is a lesbian coming-of-age story. And hopefully there will be others like you said.
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Ooo thanks for the tip! I’ll have to watch Hafsia Herzi’s previous films while I wait for that one.
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As someone who’s always hunting for unique queer cinema, I totally relate to keeping an eye on Cannes for surprising “accidental” lesbian films. Can’t wait to see what this year brings!
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Great list.
You missed the last Corsini film, Homecoming. But you may have excluded it due to controversy. But it was in competition in 2023
And the brilliant Compartment No 6 from 2021 (it’s queer lite in a way, but the lead is a queer woman)
The list would be much longer and harder to do if critics week an directors fortnight and un certain regard were in there too!
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Ooo thanks for the tips! I’ll check out Compartment No 6 asap. Homecoming isn’t available in the US or Canada but I’ll still try to track it down before next year for completion’s sake.
And doing the other categories would make this sooo long! Clearly hard enough to make it complete just in competition. haha
Over a week ago, a TikTok video posted by Mr Big USA (“Documenting the thoughts & beliefs of people in this Era!”) surfaced on FauxMoi reddit. Shot in the Atlanta area, the clip showed deeply beloved Pitch Perfect actress Anna Camp clutching arms with a young woman companion, being asked by a bearded man in a scarf, “What do you expect from a guy on the first date?”
“Well,” Anna responds, laughing, “I don’t expect anything from a guy anymore, because I [cuts out here] and it’s great.” Her companion, sporting both a flannel shirt and a canvas tote bag, agrees, “yeah, same same.”
The captions on this video claim the cut-out part is Anna saying, “I like women now,” but it’s difficult to verify. She is gesturing at Jade, to indicate the person she is dating, and it’s possible she’s saying, “I have a girlfriend now” or “I’m with her now.” I suppose anything is possible, if you really think about it.
The companion has since been identified as 24-year-old Jade Whipkey, a writer and stylist living in Los Angeles who has worked on projects with talent including KeKe Palmer, Destiny Rogers and Lena Waithe.
The full cut of the video exists on Mr Big USA’s resplendent TikTok feed. Anna and Jade call each other “babe” and appear to be glowing with affection for each other. The aforementioned clip apparently was part of a question regarding their “worst date ever.” Jade shares the story of the only date she ever went on with a boy, who kept calling her “fucker.”
In another Mr Big USA video, the host asks the duo to share their Biggest Conspiracy Theory. “That to be happy you have to be married to a guy with children,” Anna answers, laughing.
“That was deep, babe!” Jade responds.
In recent days, further materials have been posted to the world wide web suggesting a girlfriendship between Anna Camp and Jade Whipkey. For example, they recently participated in an activity labeled “Date Night,” as per Camp’s instagram stories:
Today, Jade posted another across-the-table shot of her #1 babe, Anna Camp:
Jade has also been pictured at Bar Cecil in Palm Springs with Camp in an instagram slideshow of happy moments, and the two share witty banter in instagram comments.
Shortly thereafter, on Lesbocine declared Camp officially in a relationship with a woman.
When Valerie shared the story in our team slack this morning, it was met with much fanfare, including Gabbie Hogan declaring, “this means a lot to me fr.”
“17 year old me is freaking out,” added Motti. “Tt makes so much sense bc of course a gay woman married and divorced Skylar Astin.”
“Slowly but surely all those Barden Bellas will come out (and/or play gay),” Valerie predicted.
Pitch Perfect was an important event, cinematically, for younger millennials, especially the gay ones. As a franchise, it launched a lot of fanfic and also a lot of queers. Singer/songwriter Ester Dean, who played lesbian character Cynthia Rose, identifies as gay. Rebel Wilson came out in 2022 and Anna Kendrick has expressed an openness to sexual fluidity. Wilson and Camp are currently working together on upcoming rom-com Bride Hard, where we imagine they probably have a lot to discuss!
Camp has been married twice previously: she and actor Michael Mosley got engaged circa the autumn of 2008, married in 2010, and then filed for divorce in 2013, at which point Camp began dating her Pitch Perfect costar Skylar Astin. They married in 2016 and divorced in 2019.
Camp’s career has been long and illustrious, and she entered many queer hearts through True Blood and The Good Wife. In a recent interview with Marie Claire, Camp revealed that her first-ever on-screen role was in an Olive Garden commercial, playing “a waitress delivering endless salad and breadsticks” (aka me in the year 2000). She’s currently starring in the final season of You, playing twins, to much acclaim.
On that note, Camp recently appeared on Podcrushed, a podcast hosted by Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari wherein celebrity guests talk about their teenage years.
In a clip from that episode, Camp reflects on how she’s changed in her forties, declaring, “I was raised to please other people, I’ve been in relationships with men before because I didn’t want to upset them. I’ve stayed longer because I didn’t want to upset them. I didn’t want anyone to be mad at me. I’ve had these moments where I’d be sitting in my room and the door was closed and I’d just go, something doesn’t feel right, something is off, just get up and go downstairs and say you don’t wanna do it anymore. But instead, I’d get up and I’d give them a hug.”
She concluded, “I finally decided I’m never doing that again, and I’ve never been happier.”
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
This recap will have spoilers for Season 2, Episode 5 of The Last of Us, “Feel Her Love”
Hello and welcome to this The Last of Us recap, in which Nic and I (Valerie Anne) discuss the most recent episode through a queer, nerdy lens as lovers of both the original games and television in general. As always, we will compare/contrast the game to the show, but we won’t spoil future aspects of the game, and we ask that you do the same in the comments!
Last week on The Last of Us, Ellie and Dina made it to Seattle and started plotting their way to find the Wolves and, specifically, Abby & Co, the people who came to Jackson to kill Joel, Dina found out Ellie is immune to the infection that plagues their world, and the two of them finally admitted their feelings for each other by way of many kisses.
This week, we open with Hanrahan and some Wolves at the hospital. Hanrahan specifically asks a Wolf named Park about what went down that caused them to lose some men and weld the door to the basement shut.
This scene had so much tension considering it was just two women talking across a desk.
And boy did we learn some things here.
Valerie: While I obviously love the scenes with “our” people most of all, I do love these little snapshots of “Elsewhere in the Apocalypse.” It not only gives us information that Ellie and Dina don’t have to keep us stressed, but it also just shows that everyone is doing their best to survive out here. Some people’s methods are…different than others, but no one (that we’ve seen so far, anyway) is completely unscathed by the horrors of this pandemic. Even the big bad Wolves encounter dangers they’ve never seen before, and lose loved ones to it. No one — not even Ellie — is immune to the trauma of this world they live in.
The way this scene unfolded was also so good. Before we ever see a glimpse of the cordyceps on the walls or the spores in the air, Park paints us a word picture. The B1 floor being empty of everything including rats. The B2 floor being so bad Leon and his crew asked them to seal them in. And the mystery of what that means about B3. Then the final punch at the end when Hanrahan reveals what we’d all been fearing: Leon was Park’s son. Brilliant storytelling, as always.
Also this is neither here nor there but Hanrahan has a bit of a gay strut to her step if you ask me.
Nic: Ha! I had the same thought about Hanrahan’s strut! What a strong cold open. First of all, catch me eating my hat re: Hanrahan being the leader of the WLF! I’m unclear where we are in the timeline, but since we didn’t get an on-screen marker I’m going to assume it’s pretty close to real-time. It seems like Isaac is the de facto pain-causer of the WLF which, everyone has a particular set of skills, I guess? Anyway! We do get some really unsettling information here: The cordyceps virus is in the air. IN THE AIR, VALERIE. We’ve got spores!! And the way we learn this information is as unsettling as the information itself. Shout out to Hettienne Park on slaying this scene! Hanrahan’s reaction to learning Leon was among those who sacrificed themselves was so sobering. And that final line revealing that Leon was Sergeant Park’s son? CHILLS.
Time for Seattle: Day Two! We first see our girls in the theater, Dina mapping their best route to the hospital and Ellie exploring the building.
This reminded me of the scene in Barbie where Barbie told Ken to take a walk so she could figure out how to get home. (The only thing this clip is missing is the moment two seconds later when she says “don’t go far!”)
Let’s talk about it!
Valerie: First up, I want to talk about the marquee, because you texted me about it and were unsurprised I had looked up 2003 movies and saw there was one with “Sick” in the title but it didn’t seem to be a perfect fit…then I realized I was an idiot and that it wasn’t a movie theater, it’s a regular theater, so I paused on the marquee and made out the word “Habit” and realized it’s promoting the band The Sick Habit, a fictional band whose set list you can find as a collectible in the game. THIS SHOW.
Nic: They’re SO GOOD.
Valerie: ANYWAY, inside, Dina sitting there with the walkie and the map drawing lines with the magazine of her gun?? Next time someone asks that icebreaker “who would be on your apocalypse team,” I’m picking her first. Ellie feeling useless because her skills are more…physical in nature was also very cute. And I love that they’re still using their classic non-verbal communication skills with their little smiles and hearteyes at each other. I also loved when Dina was telling her about the “long-ass building” that’s a gap in the Wolves’ line of defense and Ellie wonders aloud why they’re not patrolling it Dina just waited a beat for her to get to the answer on her own: There’s probably infected inside. Dina continuing to prove her brilliance by also knowing exactly where Nora is and also figuring out that probably the “Scars” don’t use modern technology?? No wonder Ellie is in love.
Nic: Hey thanks for calling it a magazine, because I no joke had in my notes “Dina’s using a round (?! I don’t know gun words) to mark up the map.” I love this scene because we get to see more of Dina and Ellie just being themselves together with the addition of adorable smiles and longing glances at each other. Plus Dina knowing how to triangulate is weirdly hot? She’s deeply into math in the same way Ellie’s into space facts and I love their special interests so much! They’re so stinkin’ cute!!! After they joke around about Ellie not being school-oriented, Ellie leaves Dina to her math and explores the theater. The shot of her from behind approaching the stage was gorgeous, and I was so caught up in the beauty and the admittedly improbable amount of pristine guitars that I didn’t realize what was happening until it happened. As she sang the opening lines of “Future Days” — “If I ever were to lose you…” — her mask slipped and she was visibly jolted back into her purpose: getting justice for Joel.
When Dina explains the gap in WLF patrols and how careless they are with their communication, I totally agree with you, I love the way she doesn’t immediately answer Ellie’s question about why they’d leave a whole ass building unguarded and lets her answer for herself. They’re learning from each other and you love to see it! I also appreciate that Dina identifies their plan as reckless, yet it doesn’t stop either of them.
On the way to enact their plan, Dina and Ellie chat so Dina doesn’t throw up from nerves. Dina does, however, throw up from seeing more dead Seraphites, which leads to a conversation about whether or not Dina should go with Ellie to find Abby at all.
“So I’m gonna love you like I’m gonna lose you. I’m gonna hold you like I’m saying goodbye.” 🎶
So obviously we need to chat about their chats.
Valerie: Once again a perfect scene to encapsulate the depths of Ellie and Dina’s characters, and also the range of Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced’s acting skills. They start off being silly and talking about baby names, they see dead Seraphites and Ellie starts spinning out about whether or not she should be letting Dina come on this mission, and then Dina goes into the most heartbreaking story. I almost asked you last week if we knew Dina’s backstory, because I was worried she had a family member turn and that’s why she was so harangued by potentially having to kill Ellie, but it turns out it was a raider. You can hear guilt in her voice when she says she went out to play by herself despite her mother telling her not to, but you can also hear the acceptance and anger in her voice when she says she didn’t make it back in time “because I was fucking eight.” She swiftly sidesteps the question about how she got to Jackson (which I do hope we learn eventually) and says she would have hunted that man down if she hadn’t killed him that day. Dina is often so smiley and bright that it’s easy to forget that she’s been through it, same as everyone else. She has the same darkness inside her, the same pain. She’s just better at hiding it. Broke my whole heart.
Nic: BIG OUCH, Valerie, sheesh.
“And you’re tied together with a smile, but you’re coming undone.” 🎶
Valerie: And then Ellie putting a hand softly on her cheek!! When Dina says she’ll do whatever Ellie wants, keep going or go back to Jackson, it’s almost like Ellie knows what her answer is but she also isn’t sure if it’s the answer Dina wants to hear. Or like she tries to consider going back but she can’t even fathom not following through. Dina saying “If I die, it won’t be your fault” as if Ellie would ever forgive herself was also sweet. She wants Ellie to make this choice for herself, not for Dina, and she knows Ellie’s mind is made up. So off they continue, together.
Nic: Ellie’s comment about not trusting Seattle made me realize that Grey’s Anatomy didn’t premiere until 2005 which means the world of The Last of Us never experienced the numerous tragedies that befell the staff of Seattle Grace Mercy West Grey Sloan Hospital for Improbable Events. Imagine how little they’d trust Seattle if they knew about people cutting LVAD wires willy nilly! I’m sorry, I’m stalling because this scene had me in my feelings big time.
I love how quickly Dina and Ellie can go from joking about baby names to Ellie crashing out over not making Dina go back to Jackson. That image of the dead Seraphites is so haunting. Something that keeps standing out to me is the use and different meanings of “feel her love” depending on the context. When Seraphites use it with each other, it’s meant to be comforting; but last week in the TV station, it’s painted on the wall almost as a threat; and now the Wolves are using it as a joke right back to the Seraphites.
Valerie: You know, the WLF claims to be anti-Fedra, but that “feel this, bitch” graffiti felt an awful lot like Josh Peck’s attitude. Seems like the WLF isn’t all that different than the oppressors they claim to hate.
Nic: As usual, I’m going to shout Isabela Merced’s praises here for her delivery of Dina’s story about the first person she killed. It’s the apocalypse, so everyone has a tragic story, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of imagining a tiny Dina shooting the man who killed her mother and sister. Her delivery of “because I was fucking eight” punched me in the gut. And as she tells Ellie that it wouldn’t matter who started the conflict because she still had to watch and if it had been different, if he had gotten away, she would have hunted him down. In her way, Dina is letting Ellie know that she isn’t wrong for wanting to keep going after Abby; that if she were in Ellie’s shoes she’d make the same decision, so pregnancy or not, Dina’s going to follow Ellie’s lead. I’m glad they had this conversation because again, Dina’s reminding Ellie that she has agency and Ellie isn’t responsible for her if something bad happens. These two are going to murder me, I swear; because the way Dina leans into Ellie holding her face, it’s filled with so much love and trust.
By nightfall, Ellie and Dina arrive at the mysteriously unguarded factory.
This is the kind of part in a video game where I stand at the door and whine for three minutes because I know nothing good is waiting inside.
Let’s discuss the events that unfolded there, both in the main office, and on the factory floor.
Nic: There were so many game mechanics from here to the end of the episode. I was absolutely LIVING! First up is Ellie and Dina hitting that crouch into stealth mode. And once they were inside the factory, they kept stopping to enter listen mode. A+! I think my favorite moment in this entire episode was Ellie checking out the next room and describing it as “haunted, but empty” and Dina responding with “huh, just like us” because it reminded me so much of how we (and our whole friend group, tbh) would act in an end of the world scenario.
Valerie: I totally agree — that’s absolutely the kind of interaction you and I have all the time.
Nic: As they strategize, sweet Dina emphasizes the importance of shooting being the absolute last resort so as to not alert WLF soldiers and she VERY accurately clocks her girlfriend’s propensity for shooting first and asking questions later. And among the gentle ribbing, Dina drops that Ellie’s crazy is one of the reasons she loves her, as CASUALLY as Ellie said she would die for Dina last week. SOMEBODY SEDATE ME THEY’RE TOO CUTE, VALERIE!
Valerie: When Ellie seems offended that Dina is accusing her of shooting from the hip (literally and figuratively) but Dina says she’s a little crazy and that’s one of the things she loves about Ellie??? Ellie’s FACE in that moment, the immediate shift from defensiveness to hearteyes. And then when she tries to respond and Dina just smirks like “oh, I know.” THEY’RE THE CUTEST AND I CAN HARDLY STAND IT. What if we live in this moment forever and never go on the factory floor???
Nic: PLEASE!!
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (In the Apocalypse)
Nic: Unfortunately, the cuteness is cut short by not one, not two, but SO MANY stalkers waiting for them to make their first move. Each camera pan to more and more stalkers was absolutely terrifying. Also terrifying? The stalkers ripping apart the fencing from the cage Dina was hiding in. When Jesse came to their rescue, it kind of reminded me of the moment in the pilot when Joel and Sarah think they’re about to get shot by that soldier, but Uncle Tommy comes out of nowhere to kill the soldier first.
Valerie: Two things I hated right off the bat: 1) the horrible realization I had when Dina didn’t hear any clickers, well, clicking, which surprised her and terrified me, 2) the choking sob sounds the stalkers occasionally make. This whole sequence was so terrifying, from the one stalker crouched on machinery looking like a twisted version of X-Men’s Nightcrawler, to the realization that they were surrounded, to Dina looking legitimately terrified, to Ellie being the one to come up with a plan this time. The desperate kiss Ellie gave Dina in case it was their last! My heart! The one stalker distracting Ellie so the other could attack her?? TOO SMART. No thank you! They are SO lucky Jesse found them when he did, and before the Wolves did. And Dina jumping to Ellie’s defense about her not getting bit? I could FEEL the desperation in Dina’s voice, begging Jesse to trust her that Ellie is fine. She’s probably still reeling from the trauma of thinking she was going to have to kill Ellie herself, the thought of Jesse killing her probably practically stopped her heart. STRESS.
In a true out of the frying pan and into the fire moment, they escape the factory just to run directly into Seraphite turf.
Do you think Central Park would look like an entire forest if it were this overgrown?
Time to cover this traumatic turn!
Valerie: This whole episode had been different enough from what I remember about the game that I wasn’t thinking about the game at all, just enjoying the show. But the second I heard that whistle and saw that torch in the park?? I was rocketed directly back to gameplay. I have visceral memories of sneaking around in those trees and trying not to get caught by those whistling assholes.
Jesse is pissed, and when he says they’re going to meet up with Tommy in the morning and then go home, Ellie says no, and Dina looks legitimately surprised. This was enough to shake her confidence that they can do this quest together, just the two of them. If Jesse hadn’t come…Ellie may be immune to getting infected, but she’s not immune to getting her insides ripped out, which Dina almost watched happen.
Nic: It feels odd to say that I liked scenes that involve such intense violence, but what I liked was that throughout the last two episodes, we’ve gotten to see that in this perpetual cycle of violence there’s no clear “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong.” Neither the Wolves nor the Seraphites are innocent in this war and they’ve both committed heinous attacks against the other group. I found it really tough to watch the Seraphites torture the WLF soldier in the name of their Prophet; because of course they think it’s what she would want. While Ellie, Jesse, and Dina hide, we learn that Jesse and Tommy left the night after Ellie and Dina did and I honestly had the same reaction that Ellie did: initial indignation leading to resignation that it’s a damn good thing they followed.
Valerie: As if the stress levels weren’t high enough, Dina gets hit with an arrow on the leg – too close to the femoral artery for my liking, as someone with a degree from Seattle Grace Mercy West Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital for the Dramatic and Traumatized — and then they SPLIT UP. This seems to be Ellie’s go-to plan idea and I DON’T LIKE IT. And of course Ellie can’t resist going to the hospital on her own. Of course she can’t! I wonder if she would have thought of it if she hadn’t seen the sign. If she had run the other direction, would she have found her way out of the park and followed the plan to meet back at the theater? Or would she have always gone ahead, mission-oriented, restless to find her quarry? I’m not sure, to be honest.
Nic: When Dina got an arrow to the leg, I legitimately yelped because I didn’t expect it at all. But once they separated, I had a feeling Ellie was about to make some… Decisions.
Ellie decides to sneak off to the hospital instead of going back to the theater to meet back up with Dina and Jesse.
“Seeing red” indeed.
Let’s talk about what Ellie found there.
Nic: I’m like a broken record at this point, but I love the way the show seamlessly integrates “ripped from the game” moments with original moments. The previous scene is so different from the game but as soon as I saw the hospital and WLF base, it felt like I could pick up a controller and have Ellie army crawling through the tall grass. Once we moved inside, I was on edge from the second Nora started disinfecting the medical supplies. Watching Ellie here was like that moment in the theater when she started singing “Future Days.” Something in her activated when she was faced with someone who had a hand in Joel’s death, and she became singularly focused: find Abby at any cost. And when Nora started talking, I thought maybe she was making an empathy play but NOPE! She doubles down on Joel deserving what he got, and then the chase ensues!
Valerie: Speaking of things yoinked directly from the game: the dog named Bonnie, hey girl. And the infamous running-after-Nora scene. My memory is notoriously not the best and I played this game YEARS ago, but as soon as I heard Nora’s name this season, I remembered chasing her down. It’s one of those things that didn’t have to be in the show! There’s no story reason for there to be a chase — though they added a pretty cool one. So it felt weirdly satisfying to see Nora sprinting through the halls and having Ellie hustle after her. (With more skill than I performed with in my personal playthrough.)
And then when Ellie gets down to B2?? You see why they found a way to keep the chase in. We needed to see this. It’s absolutely stunning, and, not for the first time, I am hoping the set design team gets awards for this season. And Ellie seeing Leon Park, becoming one with the cordyceps, breathing out spores?? Haunting! Also haunting? When Ellie first dives down the shaft to follow Nora, you can hear the WLF soldiers who had been chasing her stop in their tracks, yell about the shaft being open, and ordering the hallway to be sealed.
Nic: Once they get down the elevator shaft and we realize that they’re in the previously sealed off basement, everything from the visuals to the music shifts. I love the decision to take a break in the middle of the chase to remind us why we’re here in the first place: cordyceps. And I’m with you, it’s weird that it’s tragically beautiful to see the way it’s infected every surface — the walls, the floor, the body of Leon Park.
The break is short lived though because as soon as Ellie switched on that red light, I knew what time it was. Masterful work on Bella Ramsey and Tati Gabrielle’s parts here. Nora thinks they’re both doomed, but Ellie’s not coughing and it slowly sinks in that there really is an immune girl. Which to her, makes what Joel did even worse because maybe there could have been a cure. And as she makes a last ditch effort to sway Ellie with the knowledge of Joel’s actions in the hospital, it does nothing because our girl doesn’t look shocked at all. She knows what went down and she doesn’t care.
Tati Gabrielle was INCREDIBLE in this episode.
Valerie: When we see a darkness settle in over Ellie?? Epic. Nora doesn’t make this easier on herself, like how she called Joel a “little bitch” upstairs, by saying they would have made a cure “from you” which sounds icky to me. Not “from your DNA” or “by studying you.” FROM you. Yikes. And also she reveals this like she thinks she’s a D&D big bad giving their final speech. But there’s no surprise on Ellie’s face. The way Ellie says, “I know” gave me chills. So powerful. Also the way she keeps repeating, “Where’s Abby,” over and over. And the hatred in her eyes isn’t just for Abby; she has reasons to hate them all. Owen just watched when he was probably the only one strong enough to physically stop Abby if he wanted to. Mel drugged Dina. Manny kicked her in the ribs. And Nora? Nora’s the one who held her down. Nora made her watch.
Nic: I loved showing Ellie holster her gun as a nod to Dina accusing her of just shooting no matter what. She drags this out the same way Abby dragged out Joel’s torture and murder. With each swing of the pipe on Nora’s body, Ellie starts to release every bit of rage she’s kept inside for the last three months, and while it’s really hard to watch, it was inevitable.
And just like that, Ellie becomes an anti-hero.
Valerie: When Ellie walks up to Nora, who is helpless on the ground, she squats down to talk to her exactly like Abby did to Joel. Ellie picks up a golf-club-shaped pipe and hits Nora over and over, just like Abby did to Joel. In her pursuit of revenge, Ellie is becoming the very monster she is hunting.
And last but not least…
The stark contrast between the Ellie in the last scene and this scene, though!!
The flashback.
Nic: AND IN CASE WE FORGOT WHAT WE LOST… they hit us with a “Hey, kiddo.” Are y’all kidding?! Also Ellie doesn’t have her tattoo so WHEN ARE WE?!
Valerie: MY SHAYLAS. This scene was like 30 seconds and 3 words long and it SHATTERED ME. Ellie in her own bed, Joel smiling from the doorway in Dad Pose, saying “hey kiddo,” Ellie’s soft, sleepy, happy little “hi.” SMASH MY HEART WITH A LEAD PIPE WHY DON’T YOU, SHOW. I was hoping we’d get more glimpses into what happened during the five-year time jump between seasons, but now I’m not sure my heart is ready for what’s in store.
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Valerie Anne (she/they) a TV-loving, video-game-playing nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories in all forms. While having a penchant for sci-fi, Valerie will watch anything that promises a good story, and especially if that good story is queer.
Nic is a Senior Product Manager at a major Publisher and lives in Astoria, NY. She is way too attached to queer fictional characters and maintains that buying books and reading books are two very different hobbies. When she's not consuming every form of fiction, you can find her dropping it low on the dance floor. You can find Nic on twitter and instagram.
First of all, thank you Nic and Valerie for these recaps that are so insightful and positive. This is really the only thing I consume about the show outside of the official HBO post-show podcast because the nastiness about Bella Ramsey hurts my heart too much. There is so much thoughtless, uncritical talk about this show—I mean uncritical in the academic sense—that fails to consider the intricacies of adapting source material and the constrains/limitations of different genres. So, great work here. I appreciate it.
Speaking of the official podcast: In the latest episode, Druckmann explains that Sick Habit comes from the title of a website that he made in the 2000s. The “sick habit” being the need to create. Not majorly important information, but a nice little tidbit, I think.
I have watched clips of the games but never sat downed to play the games, so my main understanding of the infected comes from the show. I can’t really compare the two versions accurately. The show’s depiction of them, at least, has made me to tear up repeatedly. In another show, they might just be monsters, but they’re something more here: a kind of body horror that sits with me for a long time after I watch an episode.
The stalkers and the people who have been turned into spore factories are spectacularly heartbreaking. The stalkers especially as they seem to still have a lot of their human faculties. They make human-like noises, similar to people being tortured. It is as if there is still a conscious human trapped inside. They remind me of other horror stories where the body is taken over but the mind is still functional. I was actually shaking watching them on screen this week. The spore people too. They still have eyes that look alive and their faces are frozen in screams. Like the stalkers, they make sounds like moans of pain as they breathe out the spores. To become a mindless zombie is bad enough, but to be conscious and trapped in your body, watching it do things you don’t want it to do… that is pure horror.
I could go on forever, but I’ll end with one last thing that I can’t stop thinking about. The visuals have been fantastic this season. Using red as a signal of not only physical danger but of emotional danger, of the danger of losing oneself in rage, has been fantastic. I love the use of it at the end of this episode to show Ellie making a major shift. She’s well on the road to losing herself here, to becoming like the WLF and the Seraphites, who mindlessly deal death back and forth, and are callous and cold about it (“Feel this, bitch”). The red light also just does this great thing to Bella’s face. It makes their face look more severe than it really is and also the red makes their eyes look black—a small detail, but very impactful.
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Jessica, thank you for this comment and your kind words! I’m so glad this can be a space for you to debrief about the show away from the cesspool of negativity that exists on the Internet. Your comments about the infected really resonated with me too; in the game, the player is so focused on eliminating the threat in front of them, be it WLF, Scars, or infected, that there really isn’t time to sit with the idea that the infected were people first. It’s something the show does an incredible job showcasing. It’s kind of always present, but back in season one they brought it to the forefront when Sam got bit and asked Ellie if he would still be him after he turned into a monster. What an innocent and terrifying question from a child!
Also agree about the red!! They’re doing such masterful work with visuals this season!
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You’re welcome! I just have to give acknowledgement when it is due. Insightful commentary is rare and deserves to be amplified. I got so used to reading only academic literary commentary when I was in grad school that I really struggle now with the absolute toxic wasteland that is the internet.
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Seconding what Nic said! Thank you for being in this space with us. Some people were going to hate this adaptation no matter what happened because it wasn’t (and could never be!) a shot-for-shot recreation of the video game. (Which, in my opinion, would have been boring! That’s what the game is for! I love that this is different enough to be interesting and exciting without deviating so far that it’s unrecognizable from the source material!)
And yes, that red light really amped up that scene!!
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Dina, my girl, not even one ounce afraid for herself, but getting scared for Ellie!
Never was I this relieved in my life to see a guy save Ellie from stalkers. Thanks Jessie (was it the same in the game, mind’s in tatters!)
Ellie, my girl, going on a rampage. I would say this was the moment in the game, and now in the show, where she becomes someone else for me. I think, it was not my most favourite part back then. Because it’s you as a player pushing that controller button (was there even a choice to let Nora live?) Here, it seems equally inevitable. Code red!
The set design was amazing, horribly so with the visuals and sounds, eek.
I loved the ending! And I’m so not ready for the flashbacks to come 💜
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Yeah TLOU2 had a lot of things that made me put down my controller and go “well what if I just DON’T, what then???” because everyone was making stressful choices haha
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I hate how nasty fans are about Bella. They seem like such a sweetheart and are really talented too. I hear people say the creator is a Zionist. Is that true? I know Pedro and Bella have been very outspokenly pro Palestine. People have said Isabela is a Zionist too but I can only find one vague both sides thing she posted and then pro Palestine stuff so I’m confused?
Hoooly crap, this interview is fantastic!!! Loved all the brilliant insights from both Riese and Charlie. I checked out Charlie’s website too and was intensely charmed by all of her writing. 10/10 this made me so happy to be a paid subscriber!
This was so fascinating, thank you both – Charlie for agreeing to be interviewed and Riese for giving this interview to AS readers!
have read this interview no less than 3 times! thank you to both Charlie and Riese for the candid conversation
Thanks for the peek into this world. Hoping Charlie finds the F/F client couple of her dreams.