About six months ago I wrote a post on Glee and disability and said some things, mostly defending the show. It didn’t go over so well, probably because it wasn’t very well thought through, and I have since deleted and regretted and blah blah blah. Of course, none of the people who thought I was being wrong on the internet (which, maybe I was, or maybe I just didn’t articulate it right, or…) then didn’t see me admit that I actually was…

And this is why I’m kind of hesitant to write this. Because I don’t want to put my foot in AGAIN.

But guys, Glee is getting worse. I know that they try to be all inclusive and talking about important stuff, but it’s not going so well. I feel like since I defended it, it’s gotten continously worse, and it makes me sad.

Don’t get me wrong, it still has its moments, the songs are (usually) amazing, but the storylines… Meh.

(SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS behind the cut)

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Oh my God. It’s no wonder I am so good at writing angsty, depressing, outright suicidal type prose. See, over the last few weeks I’ve been reading a lot of library books, and there is only one tiny shelf in English, so mostly I’ve had to make do with Swedish authors, as I hatehatehate reading translated works. And in the last fortnight I’ve read books with the following plots:

1) A bullied girl who kind of by accident ends up at a party with her worst bullies. The highlight of the evening includes four or five drunk teenage boys, an even drunker lonely fifteen-year-old girl, a BROKEN BEER BOTTLE and a secluded bit of forest. That’s all I’m going to say about that one.

2) A boy who, without knowing that his sister, best friend and girlfriend are inside, sets fire to a school. No, none of them make it out alive.

3) A mother with untreated post partum depression, who gets enough, and just drives away from her family. Her daughter is four, so it’s been going on for some time. It also turns out that her mother AND grandmother had similar problems, that her daughter has anger issues and, yes, it’s very much Norén drama over it all. I think. I’ve never seen a Norén play, they seem too depressing.

4) A mostly funny tale of drunken escapades, which involves broken hearts, dramatic turns and um, two suicides. Only one succeesful, though, if that helps.

5) An actually pretty awesome book about a disabled woman and a triangle love drama, but it also includes being kicked out of your home because you’re gay, being put up for adoption because you’re disabled and um, some closet alcoholism.

That is, all these books were good in their own ways, really, but as I’ve given away the plots for them I won’t tell you the titles. Except for #5, which is named Udda, by Sara Löwestam. It’s absolutely brilliant, funny and poignant and the humour makes the sad parts all the more powerful. I absolutely love the character Lelle in this book. So, so much. Any and all Swedes reading this should buy it.

So, yes. I feel the need to read something in English now. I might have to place an order for Suite Scarlett and Scarlett Fever, because I HAVE TO HAVE THEM. I’ve only read #1, though, so I feel justified.

Nevermind that I’m trying to not spend all my money on books. Nevermind that at all…

I am marrying Rachel Maddow, seriously. She is the most brilliant TV person ever. In this YouTube-clip she speaks to Richard Cohen, a man who has written several books on curing the gay, and whose credentials is that he’s been cured from homosexuality. Yes. Seriously. He has also been KICKED OUT of The American Counseling Association, and claims this happened because he is the victim of a hate crime, and that it happened simply because the president of the organisation was a gay man who didn’t like his work. The truth? The had ethical concerns about his financial relationship with his clients and using them to promote himself.

The reason this is important, is because a law is currently being passed in Uganda, making it legal to execute people for simply being gay. The backing for this comes from America – they are using, among other things, the information written and published by this guy to “prove” that gayness is totally cureable and that people who are gay are just not wanting to be straight hard enough. So, this is not just a freak sitting in a corner self-publishing books than nobody buys anyway. This stuff is hurting gay people already. Read more about the law at Feministing. Oh, and as I went to publish this I found this post, saying that they’ve actually dropped the killing part in this particular law, but as the writer at Feministing points out – this is still a gay hate bill, guys! Don’t be fooled!

Still, Rachel Maddow is doing an amazing job taking this man apart, quoting his own book to him and making him sweat something crazy. It’s brilliant. However, I have not found a place where there is a transcript that isn’t the full transcript of the entire show, and while the other guests (or rather, Rachel speaking to them) are also brilliant I feel that it’s important to quote JUST this part somewhere. And somewhere is right here, thank you for asking.

So here it is. The essential parts have been taken from the MSNBC website, and the whole thing can be read here. The stuff I’ve cut out is mainly the other person in the conversation nodding along, saying stuff like “yes”, and “right”. And finally, emphasis in this text is entirely mine. Cos, well, I had to. I am not using blockquotes, because this is a long text and I want it to be as easy to read as possible. I hope you’lll read all of it!

====

MADDOW: For example, according to their brochure, you can attend a tender loving care healing seminar for a cost of only $450 per couple.

For another $450, you can enroll in a three-month teleconference class. Yes, three months of phone calls for just $450.

For $75, there‘s this entire five C.D. series on healing your homosexuality or you can take home a different 16-disc C.D. series Coming Out Straight for $49.95, which frankly, just numerically speaking, seems like a better deal.

If you‘d like to become a sexual reorientation coach yourself — yes, I said reorientation — the C.D. series and manual for that is only $349.95.

Again, in just a moment, we will talk to the man who is selling all of that.

(…)

MADDOW: Joining us now is Richard Cohen, author of the book, Coming Out Straight: Understanding and Healing Homosexuality. Mr. Cohen is also head of the International Healing Foundation, which purports to be able to turn gay people straight. Mr. Cohen, thank you very much for being with us tonight. I really appreciate your time.

RICHARD COHEN, AUTHOR, COMING OUT STRAIGHT: Thank you for having me, Rachel.

MADDOW: First, let me ask you if I‘ve gotten any facts wrong in anything I just said. I know you haven‘t been happy with our coverage.

COHEN: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate this opportunity. You know, Uganda got it wrong, and I‘m sorry to say you did too, Rachel. And I‘m grateful to be here to set the record straight about the misrepresentation of our work.

Since the 1950s, the Uganda government has punished people for engaging in homosexual behavior, so this is not new. We were invited in the spring of this year as you said. We sent Caleb Brundage and he shared his wonderful story of change from homosexual to heterosexual. And he told them to have compassion, love and understanding for all people who experience homosexual feelings. So we do not believe in this legislation. We had no knowledge of it, and we disavow all relationship to it.

We are promoting loving people, loving all homosexual people, people who choose to live a homosexual life or decide to live that, and those who decide to come out straight like myself and Caleb.

MADDOW: Are you troubled at all to see Stephen Langa holding your book up and citing Coming Out Straight as inspiration? He is the main proponent of the kill-the-gays bill. Does that trouble you at all?

COHEN: Well, if you listen to his words, he only said that I was teaching about some of the causes, what we believe are the causes of homosexuality. We believe that nobody‘s born this way. You keep saying we think people choose to be gay. We do not believe that.

I believe that, psychologically, there are many causes to this phenomena, which means change is possible. So we are not a political organization. We‘re a therapeutic, counseling organization who provides help to men and women with unwanted same-sex attraction and their family members. We do not believe in this legislation, Rachel. We believe in tolerance and love for all people.

MADDOW: I understand that you don‘t think of yourself as a political organization. The reason you‘ve been a subject of discussion on this show, and the reason I wanted to talk to you tonight is because your teaching and your activism have been used for a political purpose which is to promote this bill. (…) Uganda has a history, as you said, going back many decades of criminalizing homosexuality. (…)

But you have told them, particularly in your book, Coming Out Straight, which I understand you donated multiple copies of to this organization that‘s promoting this bill. You‘re telling them exactly what they need to hear in order to justify the kill-the-gays bill. I mean, your book portrays gay people as predators who must be stopped to protect the innocent.

COHEN: Oh, no, no, no.

MADDOW: It doesn‘t?

COHEN: No, no, no. Not at all. And in fact, Caleb told me he, with passion, shared to these people what he experienced as a homosexual man and as you heard Stephen Langa say, that people are searching for love. How could they punish?

It‘s just incomprehensible that they would – like, you know, as you have said over the last few days in this bill, that they would want to incarcerate or to criminally punish these men and women. We are totally against that. We are for your rights and anyone‘s rights to live a homosexual life. And we‘re for the rights for those who seek change and want to come out straight.

MADDOW: Let me try to make more comprehensible to you. The legislator who sponsored the bill told the Associated Press today, that he insists these strict measures, which I know you abhor – (…) But these strict measure they‘re proposing, including execution, are necessary in their country to prevent homosexuals from recruiting school children. (…)

Let me ask — I‘ll just read from your book, OK? 49, “Homosexuals are at least 12 times more likely to molest children than heterosexuals. Homosexual teachers are at least seven times more likely to molest a pupil. Homosexual teachers are estimated to have committed at least 25 percent of pupil molestation; 40 percent of molestation assaults were made by those who engage in homosexuality.”

This is the claim that you make in your book that exactly feeds these folks who want to execute people for being gay, what they need in order to justify that. Do you stand by what you said in your book?

COHEN: Actually, you know, that one particular quote, when I do republish it, reprint it, we will extract that from it, because we don‘t want such things to be used against homosexual persons.

MADDOW: That quote is cited — you cite somebody named Paul Cameron as the source of that book. Paul Cameron has been kicked out of the American Psychological Association, the Nebraska Psychological Association, and the Canadian Psychological Association. (…) Then, he tried to make himself a sociologist. He got kicked out of the American Sociological Association. This is — (…) this is made up information, fake authoritative stuff that, in other countries, is being taken as science and used to justify quite literally killing gay people. Do you see now why you‘re being used in a political context here?

COHEN: I see that they‘re using it, but you took that one little quote out of a 300-page book.

MADDOW: Yes.

COHEN: And the thrust and the gist of the text is why people have same-sex attraction and the opportunity for those with unwanted homosexual feelings to come out of homosexuality. There‘s nothing in there against people who experience same-sex attraction.

And again, our teaching in this country, when we went to Uganda and all over the world, because I‘ve helped thousands of people worldwide, Rachel, come out of homosexuality. And again, our method is one of love and compassion and understanding. Our Web site is ChangeIsPossible.com. And people can see our words for ourselves that we‘re about loving people.

MADDOW: I‘m happy to help. I mean, I realize I was taking the risk of helping promote you in the way that you think about these things by putting you on the air.

But I do think you‘ve actually got blood on your hands here because of the way that you‘ve been using – your organization has been used and your staffer has been used to make this legislation a reality in Uganda and I do think it‘s going to become law. So let me just ask you about something that you wanted to be taken in greater context. Your other recent book, Gay Children, Straight Parents — (…) I actually have to say, I sort of particularly resent this book because I think people might pick it up without realizing that it‘s a homosexuality-can-be-cured book, so I think you‘ve probably heard a lot of people with this, but —

(…)

COHEN: May I stop you for just a moment? Over the last few days, you have been very pejoratively saying we cure the gay away, and it was pray the gay away. We don‘t believe in any of that. We never use the “cure” word at all. We don‘t tell people to pray this away. That would be ridiculous, because there‘s strong, psychological underpinning for homosexual desires. So we‘re not trying to tell anybody what to do, Rachel. Again, we offer effective counseling, very effective for those with unwanted same sex attraction.

And the Gay Children, Straight Parents book is for family members. And whether the kids change or not, we say – in that book, I say, that‘s not the goal of this treatment plan. It‘s to learn to love your children well.

MADDOW: I will just quote to you from your own most recent newsletter, “For the past 40 years, members of the gay rights movement have been indoctrinating members of society targeting the youth. As a result of their strategic plan, millions of innocent young children have been enrolled into this false teaching and led into a homosexual lifestyle.”

The idea that you‘re not promoting the idea that gay people are something to be feared or that there‘s any threat from gay people or that you say anything people as belied by your own words. The idea that you‘re not promoting cures when you say that change is possible, changing from homosexuality to heterosexuality is possible, is a matter of semantics.

But I want to raise this issue of what causes homosexuality which, as you point out, is essential to your way of thinking. Your most recent book, Gay Children, Straight Parents which, again, says nothing about changing people from being gay on the cover, which I think I resent, regardless.

Page 72 to 74, you say, “Among the list of factors that may lead to homosexual desires —” (…) Divorce, death of a parent, adoption, religion, race.

COHEN: Race? That‘s not in there.

MADDOW: Yes, it is – page 75 of your book with your name on the cover. (…) I have to ask you – every single one of those ideas is insane to me. I mean, the idea that a divorce makes you gay for example —

(CROSSTALK)

COHEN: No, no, no.

MADDOW: You described it as a factor that contributes to homosexuality desire, OK?

COHEN: You‘re taking it out of context, Rachel.

MADDOW: No, I‘m reading it from your book, Dude. But let me —

COHEN: Yes. But read what it says before the factors. It says there are many causes. It‘s never one thing alone. It‘s a confounding of factors that leads anybody to have homosexual feelings. So you‘re thinking —

MADDOW: It is important – I‘ll read to you, “It is important to understand why your child or loved one experiences same sex attraction.”

COHEN: Correct.

MADDOW: “You may ask yourself, ‘What did I do wrong? What did we do wrong? Who did this to our child?‘ Rarely is one thing alone responsible for same sex attraction. It‘s a result of a combination of variables.” Following is a list of 10 factors that may lead to homosexual desires. And under other factors, number 10 – divorce, death of a parent, adoption, religion, race. (…) How exactly does race make you gay? What are you talking about?

COHEN: Keep reading what the book says. (…) You just read the heading. Now, read the rest of the text.

MADDOW: Divorce, death of a parent, adoption, religion, race, rejection by opposite sex peers. You go into the rejection about – you want me to read the rejection of an opposite-sex peer? I‘m not sure I have the stomach for that. “An adopted child, a boy with a fragile sense of gender identity —” let me ask you about what you said here. How does race make a person gay? It‘s your book.

COHEN: OK. The main factors that will lead somebody to experience same-sex attraction – again, it‘s multi-factorial. But basically, a boy doesn‘t bond well with his dad, the girl —

MADDOW: No. Specifically, I want to ask you why you included race there. How does race make you gay?

COHEN: It doesn‘t.

MADDOW: OK. All right. Are you a licensed therapist?

COHEN: I have practiced psychotherapy under the requirements of every state that I‘ve practiced in and resided in over the last 20 years. And I‘ve helped thousands of men and women come out of homosexuality.

MADDOW: But you are not licensed?

COHEN: No, I‘m not. But I‘ve always practiced within the legal requirements of every state.

MADDOW: The American Counseling Association kicked you out in 2002… (…) … or 2003 for ethical reasons. Are you certified as any sort of clinician at all?

COHEN: The American Counseling Association – actually, I‘m glad you brought that up. I‘m a victim, Rachel, of a hate crime. They took the heinous complaint of one client and used that as an excuse to kick me out of their non-licensing trade organization. The acting president was a gay man. They don‘t like our work. And it‘s a lack of tolerance on their part. They don‘t allow people the right of self-determination to choose if they wish to come out of homosexuality. So shame on the ACA for their intolerance.

MADDOW: I will say that the ACA kicked you out because of ethical concerns about your financial relationship with your clients and using them to promote yourself …

COHEN: Do you know what —

MADDOW: … not because that you‘re anti-gay. But I think it‘s important to note though, and I want – just in case this gets heard in Uganda or in any other country where they‘re considering basing anti-gay legislation to remove all human rights from gay people on the basis of your claim that gay people don‘t have to be that way if they don‘t want to be.

If anybody‘s watching this anywhere in the world because you‘re considering using this, I want you to know that Richard Cohen is not licensed by any American or any other licensing body whatsoever. And I think you have represented yourself, especially by putting your master‘s degree behind your name on the cover of your book, as if you‘re an authority here, as if you represent some sort of —

COHEN: I am a professional psychotherapist, Rachel. And my credentials are that I came out of homosexuality. I‘ve been married 27 and a half years to my beautiful wife. We have three great children. And again, over 20 years, I‘ve helped thousands of men and women in this country and worldwide come out of homosexuality.

ChangeIsPossible.com – we know that people can change if they want to. We do not support this Ugandan legislation. People who have same sex attractions, whether they chose to live a homosexual life like yourself, Rachel, or like me who made a decision to come out of it, we all need to be treated with respect, love and compassion.

MADDOW: Because your credentials are not scientific and they‘re not professional —

COHEN: I have a degree in psychotherapy.

MADDOW: Wait, wait, wait. You just said, because they are – you‘re not licensed by any accrediting body. And so you just stated that your credentials are your personal experience of not being gay anymore. If those are the basis of your credentials, I feel like although this is weird for me to ask you, because this is personal. I have to ask you, it‘s the basis on which you are making these claims that are being unfortunately taken seriously all around the world.

Since you have been married, have you is been attracted to men? Have you ever had a relationship with a man since you got married?

COHEN: If you read my book, Coming Out Straight, and I know you have it. You have been looking at it today, so you know the answer to this question already. You‘re just —

MADDOW: What is it?

COHEN: In the beginning of the relationship, I was told before marriage, find the right woman and she‘ll straighten you out, and that was ridiculous. What I learned in my own healing process, and my own journey was that I wasn‘t looking for a sexual relationship with a man. I was trying to experience the un-obtained bond that never happened with my dad and myself and with other guys in preadolescence. And after puberty, those needs become sexualized. So when I healed those wounds and when I experienced healthy love with guys, my same sex attractions left me, Rachel. And I‘m living my dream today.

MADDOW: It should be noted, though, that when other people, like the promoter of the anti-gay, kill-the-gays legislation in Uganda cites you as an inspiration, it‘s not only talking about the things that are in your book that you say that you‘ll now take out.

He‘s also talking about your marriage as evidence of your cure, as the fact that you have come out of homosexuality. You‘ve been cured by the fact that you‘re married. So the fact that you continued to have same sex relationships even after getting married —

COHEN: You‘re mischaracterizing that. As I said, I got married stupidly. People who say get married it will take it away are ridiculous. (…) I was only looking for the right kind of love. That‘s one reason I became a therapist because people didn‘t know how to help me then. And so, I was told, like you were saying, “Just pray and God will take it away.” It doesn‘t work like that, because there‘s deep psychological reasons for this.

When I dealt with them since that time, Rachel, I‘m strictly attracted to my wife and to women. It‘s not on my radar screen. Change is really possible.

MADDOW: I will just note for the record that all responsible professional authorities in this field report that change is not really possible. There‘s no evidence of what Mr. Cohen suggests.

COHEN: Oh, there are many studies —

MADDOW: But nevertheless, he is operating an organization that would like to sell you a lot of products that would convince you that it is true.

Mr. Cohen, I wish you personal good luck. I thank you for taking the time to come on to the show. I know you‘ve been unhappy with our conversation about your work thus far. But I hope at least you feel like you‘ve been treated fairly tonight.

COHEN: Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate it very much.

MADDOW: Thanks very much. Richard Cohen is the author of Coming Out Straight, and as we said, head of an organization that says they can turn people straight if you buy their DVDs and books and pay for their trainings. We will be, I guess, right back.

I’m sure you are sick of me harping on about Glee. Sorry about that. Today I am going to do a different angle, though, which I hope will make for a different post altogether.

So, I refused to watching this show for the longest time, because everyone told me it was so amazing. Yes. It made some kind of sense at the time. When I finally succumbed to it, I obviously fell in love. I do that a lot. Nothing new there. The first time I saw Kurt I burst out laughing, because Tansy had told me there would be a gay boy prancing about claiming to be straight. And really, nobody in this WORLD could think that he is. Really. Except that, yeah, I guess if you wanted it enough…

I do miss the presence of a lesbian or two in the show, although I’m happy with what we have so far. I was kind of disappointed when Sue Sylvester went on a date with a man, because come on. That attitude? That hair? That SWING COSTUME? She’s so a lesbian. Or maybe I just want her to be. Anyway, let’s speak about the queer presence there is instead of that which isn’t, shall we?

So, Kurt. He’s like the stereotype of a gay boy, and at first it annoyed me how much they were playing with stereotypes here, and I don’t mean just in the case of Kurt, because pretty much every character is a stereotype, only in an awesome way. I don’t really know what makes it feel right when normally that sort of thing would make me roll my eyes, but there you go.

And really, I’ll take a Kurt over a gay character that is just some sort of sidekick (or handbag) to the female lead. Because sometimes (a lot of the time), especially on TV, but in books and movies as well, the best friend becomes the expression of a minority. You know, the pretty girl with the fat friend, the straight character with a gay friend, the white character with a black friend, etc. It’s really easy to fall into that, even when you try not to, and I’m not going to claim that I don’t do it myself. Because I totally do.

(The thing I fall for the most? The freaking redhead cliché. I do that ALL THE TIME. Some time I will write a novel that doesn’t have one. Seriously. I will.)

So, yeah. There are stereotypes. Lots of stereotypes. But I’ll take it. I love Kurt. He’s amazing. He’s feminine. He gets the bullies to allow him to remove his expensive jumpers before they toss him in the dumpster. He screeches about day spas and has a whole ipod shuffle dedicated to music from Wicked. He’s pretty much awesome. When he asked to audition for Defying Gravity (link goes to YouTube of his performance) I was really excited, because it seemed to be so him.

And then he threw the high note just to go easy on his dad.

That made me so sad, for so many reasons. Because, okay. I come from a really small place. You could call it a suburb, but it’s way more of a village. We have a school, a small grocery store and a pizza place. And houses. There are cows and horses and sheep grazing only a short walk away, and when the farmers put the manure out on their crops? We can smell it for DAYS.

I went to, um, the equivalent of junior high (7th-9th grade), there. It was not fun. See, up to 6th grade we all went to small, small schools in our respective villages/suburbs. By 7th they collect kids from five or six of them, and bus them to ours, which is actually the biggest of the bunch. The result is a mish-mash of sports nuts, racists, raggare (I cannot translate that word!), girls who express themselves through new clothes and cattyness, and of course, a handful of nobodies. It’s not a pretty picture.

I was a nobody. Actually, I was less than a nobody. In middle school I was just a nerd, and nobody cared much about me. The boys let me play soccer with them sometimes, but for the most part me and my few friends hung out and looked over at the kids that were pretty and awesome and we couldn’t even talk to without them sneering at us. When I started junior high something changed. I think it was because I made friends with a girl from one of the smaller villages. I didn’t know it then, but she’d apparently been seriously bullied before. So, as you can imagine, the popular kids didn’t like that both of us made new friends, even if it just was each other. So they decided that we were dykes and that we were going to pay for it. I got my heart broken when the twat (seriously, my taste was lacking something shocking) I was trying to convince myself I had a crush on (because he was a boy, and girls crushed on boys, right?) played along with these games. We got to hear a lot of stuff, most popular was saying that we “smelled like dykes”, that whatever jewellery we were wearing was a gift from the other person, and that we should just admit it already. It was nothing big. It was just, small minded, un-creative taunts. Had I heard them today I would’ve laughed my arse off at them, that much is for sure.

At the time it was the biggest insult ever, and I was so mortified.

It didn’t last all that long, but it felt like a fucking lifetime. Of course, amusingly, I went on to become just a lesbian, which is a special kind of irony. My friend dropped out of high school, became pregnant and went on to play house with an older guy. I think she was 15 and him 17 when the first one was born. They have five or six kids now, the oldest being 12 or 13. We lost touch when I went on to the typical high school experience while she popped out children. Her choice, and I respect it fully, but at the time I missed her so much, and didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

Later I would date a girl who was still in high school, while I was 20-21, and got a taste of it all over again. She didn’t want to come out, which I was hurt by at the time, and in retrospect it was fucking stupid, because it wasn’t my choice to make. But I went with her to school once, telling everyone I was her friend, and did what I could to play cool. Possibly the fact that we locked ourselves into the loo and snogged during the lunch break helped a bit.

She would come out during her last year, and we went to the high school prom together, getting no shit whatsoever for it. So, ironically, I got a ton of taunting and teasing for being a lesbian when I wasn’t, and then when I was… I didn’t get any.

But I can say one thing, and that is that not singing that song makes no difference in the big picture. People will always find a reason for yelling “dyke” or “fag” in your direction, if they want to. And throwing a note and thereby making sure that you don’t get to fulfill that dream that you have? Really doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Then again, people are generally tougher on boys in this aspect. Just today I read this horrible post about the murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, which made me want to write this post in the first place, and it’s just… sickening. So maybe Kurt did make the right decision. I don’t know. But it just about killed me seeing him doing it.

I removed this post.

Why? Because I’ve realised that I: a) shared too much from my past, b) said some not so thought-through crap, c) really don’t know what I’m talking about, d) I don’t want to start any new arguments, and I definitely don’t want people to get here belatedly, become upset and comment. That is, I don’t want to upset more people than I already have, so while I think those posts were important to write at the time, I’ll keep them to myself from now on.

(As a friend said: “It’s not necessarily a point you want to make a year from now”, and she is right.)

I have never written this fast on my own before. It’s surreal. And when I say “on my own” I mean that the only way I’ve managed this much before is by having the prompt of having a co-writer, always giving me a paragraph to go on, reactions, narration, all that stuff.

This project is half easy as pie, half tricky and complicated. Because while I can spout off 2,000 words of Polly narration in an hour or two, writing her twin brother is SO MUCH HARDER. Although, I have to say that I am extremely amused that he turned out to realise that he was gay about ten chapters too early. Anyone who knows me knows that half my characters turn gay, or, you know, straight when they’re supposed to not be, and so on. I don’t think I’ve written a story in my life which was entirely heteronormative. Which is a pretty awesome quirk to have, I must say.

So, since my boy, turned gay so early I was directed towards Glee and the awesome gay kid in it. People have told me from the start that I would love this show. And I become anti, and I don’t watch it because everyone tells me I have to and in the end I LOVELOVELOVE it about a million years after everyone else.

So, yeah, here I am. You were right, damn it. All of you.

I have to say, though, that as much as I love Awesome Gay Kid, Evil Coach and all the others… I love Mercedes the most. She’s not only gorgeous, but curvy and fun and just… plain amazing. I keep replaying her numbers, just because she looks so amazing wearing real clothes, as opposed what you normal do with people of size on TV.

Sadly I can’t find a decent version of her song Bust Your Windows on YouTube. This one is the best I can find, which is like, really bad audio because I think the person is actually, um, FILMING THEIR COMPUTER or something.

Damn it. I wasn’t supposed to write about this today! Ack, poor Dairy Queen waiting to get reviewed.