Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

So I started this fun little project, researching queer people from the 15th and 16th centuries. Cool, right? At first I was like, "I'm gonna go prove that queer people always been here! 😘 Take that TERFs and homophobes!!!!" And at first, that was super fun because, guess what! I found TONNNNNNNNES of queer stuff from 500 years ago. The 2000 year old Chinese cutsleeve tradition (still in full swing, go look up "Danmei" on tumblr dot com, YOU ARE WELCOME), with romantic epics about powerful men and their beautiful male lovers, even with its own GOD of same-sex love, Tu'er Shen 兔儿神. The 8th century Japanese Buddhist priest Kūkai 空海 went to China to study Vajrayana Buddhism and allegedly learned the art of monastic gay love. He invented the Kana writing system still used today, established the Japanese state religion of Shingon Buddhism, and established the Japanese insitution of wakashudo-- the way of desiring beautiful young men. Then there's those Flore...

There's a particular sensation of falling in love with a work of fiction. It's giddy. It hurts. I remember being a little kid in my attic room, reading as far as Frodo poisoned and lifeless in Shelob's lair, and crying myself to sleep. It wasn't until the next day that I realized, with Sam, that Frodo was still alive.  I wandered through my day at Piney Branch Elementary in a haze, just wanting to go back to my characters-- to Middle Earth, to Earthsea, to the Magic Kingdom (for Sale--SOLD!). My mom and I read The Lymond Chronicles together-- and we'd steal the books and get ahead of each other, and yell and weep about Lymond's self-sacrifice and brilliance, and Philippa's goodness and bravery. That world of 16th century high romance adventure overlay the dull and growing pain of real life. And we finished the last book together right before my mom died.  I reread them all again, in a fugue of escapism, love, and grief.  Harry Potter was the next thing to sn...