Queerly Recommended

Time comes for all of us. Well, most of us. We're not sure about Kris.

This week, we're out of listener questions and our home lives are… steady? What's another word for steady? Boring? Uneventful? Regardless, no questions and no personal updates means this episode is a little shorter than usual.

Kris talks about the difficulties of watching Euphoria as an adult. Tara suffers alone in the desert of RuPaul's Drag Race as she's dying for All Stars 8 to begin.

From Kris: Anything's Possible

This week, Kris recommends the Billy Porter-directed film, Anything's Possible (2022). It's billed as a Gen-Z, coming-of-age movie about a confident trans girl and the boy who decides to make his move in the last year of high school.

From Tara: My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is a manga series about a single dad and his daughter in Tokyo, who are visited by the husband of the father's recently deceased twin brother. It explores casual homophobia as a cultural norm in Japan and shows a different, more connected sense of what family can be when we challenge the idea of "should".

• Sweet Tooth (Netflix)
• Euphoria (HBO)
• Survivor (CBS)
• RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season Eight (Paramount+)
• The Mandalorian (Disney+)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
• Hum Tum (2004)
• Tom of Finland, artist

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This week, we start off by celebrating the Peabody Award nomination for our fave reality documentary show, We're Here (HBO Max). The show is doing important work and more people need to hear it! From there, things devolve pretty rapidly. It's a MERS (Monday Evening Recording Sesh), people. You've been warned.

Kris answers a listener's question about Tara. Tara gives us her thoughts on the wrap up of this bumpy season of RuPaul's Drag Race. And despite being an avowed non-spoiler person, Kris runs us through the movie 65, which is about future soldiers… in the past… fighting dinosaurs… and there's an asteroid. Buckle up, buttercups. We're going to space!

From Kris: Three Months

This week, Kris brings us the film Three Months (2022). It's about a young gay man finally getting out of high school and into the wider world, only to find out he might have been exposed to HIV. While waiting the three months to learn his test results, various aspects of his life, his future and his past are challenged.

From Tara: Workhorse Queen

Workhorse Queen (2021) is Tara's pick this week. It's a documentary tracking Ed Popil, telemarketing center manager by day and drag queen extraordinaire, Mrs. Kasha Davis, by brunch. It follows the life and career of MKD, exploring the space between those who make it onto RuPaul's Drag Race and the many, many others who are doing the damn thing day in and day out, without the same accolades or followers. It's a great one.

• We're Here (HBO)
• Catfish: The TV Show (MTV)
• 65 (2023)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• The Mandalorian (Disney+)
• Octopath Traveller 2 (Nintendo Switch)

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This week, Tara comes to us from her sickbed. She's down with Covid and wants us all to stay home when we think we have a cold, because sometimes it's not "just a cold." Kris reveals the classic literary novel she hates and shots are fired at baseball. A listener question also sends them deep down the rabbit hole of their reading and writing histories.

From Kris: Shrinking (Apple TV+)

This week, Kris brings us the television series Shrinking. The story follows a therapist dealing with the tragic loss of his partner, as he decides to take a new approach of giving brutal honesty to his clients.

From Tara: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Gender Queer is an autobiographical graphic novel from Maia Kobabe. It dives deep into the experience of growing up with gender dysphoria (and euphoria), asexuality and transness as a nonbinary person. Although this powerful, honest memoir doesn't end neatly, it gives vital perspective to an identity and experience we need to support and protect now more than ever.

• Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan
• The Trixie Belden books by Julie Campbell Tatham
• The Bobbsey Twins books by Laura Lee Hope (pseudonym)
• The Baby-Sitters Club novels by Ann M. Martin
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
• Jane Rule, author
• And Playing the Role of Herself by K. E. Lane
• Hoosier Daddy by Ann McMan and Salem West
• The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
• Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews
• Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Danielle Steel, author
• LaVyrle Spencer, author
• Stephen King, author
• Ted Lasso, Season Three (Apple TV+)
• American Idol (Fox)
• Alaska Daily (ABC)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• Next in Fashion (Netflix)
• Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)
• Suited (2016)
• The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

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Come and celebrate with us as Tara announces her new job. Also, Kris finally reveals her age for all of you playing at home.

We get advice on book hangovers. The two try to separate the art from the artist with the third season of Ted Lasso (it's hard, y'all). Then Tara describes her new adventure into the world of Bollywood and Indian cinema.

From Kris: Meeting Millie by Clare Ashton

A lot of the early scuttlebutt on this book was around its tagline and the reaction to it. "Can two women, one gay and one straight, be friends forever or does sex get in the way?" It hit a lot of readers and writers the wrong way, but the positive is that Meeting Millie is a great book! Kris adored this past-present, friends-to-lovers romance that just makes you feel good. Check it out.

From Tara: A New Life and She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki

Tara has two recommendations this week. The first is a very short video game by Angela He called A New Life, which puts the player in control of a relationship between two women and its possible beginnings, middles and ends. It's a bittersweet game, because isn't love just a (hopefully) really long walk to a sad ending? A New Life is beautiful, short, and worth your time.

Tara's second recommendation is the manga She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki is. As Tara says, it's "just what it says on the tin." One woman loves to cook, one woman loves to eat, and between the two a relationship begins. It's a gentle, lovely, wonderful warm hug of a book, which you might need after playing A New Life.

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Ted Lasso, Season Three (Apple+)
• Alaska Daily (ABC)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• The Romantics (Netflix)
• 3 Idiots (2009)
• Bittersweet by Susan Cain

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You want to know the easiest way to turn Kris and Tara into perpetual recommendation machines? Just ask them to pick one of something. Works every time, including this episode, where we get not just one but two questions asking for their favourite thing. Look at the works discussed list! The first ten are from the first ten minutes!

From Kris: Wolf Pack

This week, Kris recommends the Paramount+ teen drama series, Wolf Pack. In the wake of a sudden wildfire, two teenagers encounter a supernatural creature that changes them and their lives forever.

The only thing Kris doesn't like about this show is that the town seems to be simultaneously too big to be a town (is it a city?) and too remote to be anything else. She loved everything else. Check it out.

From Tara: I Can't Believe I Slept With You!

Listen. LISTEN. The premise for Tara's recommendation is super sketchy. She admits that. It's a love story that starts off with a landlady asking for sex from her female tenant in lieu of payment. But it's okay, actually, because all is not as it initially appears to be! No, seriously.

I Can't Believe I Slept With You! by Miyako Miyahara is a sapphic manga series that starts shaky but ends wonderfully. It's tender, it's sweet, it deals with complicated feelings, and has a twist that recontextualizes everything. And that hand holding scene! *swoon*

• Truth and Measure and Above All Things by Roslyn Sinclair
• The Delicate Things We Make by Milena McKay
• The Headmistress by Milena McKay
• Kiss the Girl by Melissa Brayden
• The Red Files by Lee Winter
• Honor Series by Radclyffe
• And Playing the Role of Herself by K. E. Lane
• All That Matters by Susan X. Meagher
• Temptation by Kris Bryant
• Not Guilty by Brit Ryder
• Forget Me Not by Kris Bryant
• Music and the Mirror by Lola Keeley
• The Fixer and Chaos Agent by Lee Winter
• Veronica Mars (Warner Bros. and Hulu)
• 1923 (Paramount+)
• The Perfect Match (Netflix)
• The Mole (Netflix)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• People Change by Vivek Shraya
• The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
• I'm Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya
• White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao

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Tara unveils a brand new hobby and Kris does an endzone dance to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs's Super Bowl win. Then they get down to business (serious face). No, for real.

Okay, fine. There's lots of laughing in this one. We hope you have as much listening as we did recording this one.

From Kris: Ghosts (CBS)

This week, Kris recommends the American TV series Ghosts. Sam and Jay think they've won big by inheriting a country house. Unfortunately the tenants are still around…and they're GHOSTS! After a near death experience that allows Sam to see the ghosts, the living and the dead start to get to know each other and work out centuries-old drama. Sounds like a lot of fun.

From Tara: Dating Amber (2020)

Tara brings the Irish film Dating Amber (2020) to the table this week. In the podcast, she calls it a platonic romance with two queer kids, Eddie and Amber, who pretend to be dating to escape harassment from their peers about their sexualities. What neither expects is a friendship that pushes them along their respective paths of self-discovery.

• Your Place or Mine (2023)
• 1923 (Paramount+)
• Wolf Pack (Paramount+)
• The Last of Us (HBO)
• RuPaul's Drag Race: Season 15 (MTV)
• Cunk on Earth (Netflix)
• These Thin Lines by Milena McKay

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What do Kris and Tara talk about off-mic? Vegetables! On-mic, they continue to discuss vegetables, sports, Japanese shows with no angst and tons of food, as well as taking the temperature of the latest season of Drag Race (tepid so far?).

With that out of the way, the two dive into THAT EPISODE of THAT SHOW (The Last of Us) and Lee Winter's impossible task of rehabilitating one of her worst villains.

From Kris: The Last of Us

Kris comes to us from the post-apocalypse, bearing strawberries of content! The Last of Us (HBO Max) is an adaptation of the PlayStation video game and it currently has a Game of Thrones-like grip on media right now.

It's the story of a fungal infection that destroys the world and a hardened man tasked with transporting the only living person to resist the infection across America. And that living person? She's a mouthy 14 year old queer girl.

From Tara: The Villains Series by Lee Winter (The Fixer and Chaos Agent)

Lee Winter never meant to explore the love life and redemption of her villain from The Red Files, but Tara's grateful she did. In this duology (The Fixer and Chaos Agent), Winter asks tangled, thorny, interesting questions about redemption and accountability, while delivering a delicious slow burn romance. Tara loved it.

Works/People Discussed

• Jeopardy!
• History of the World: Part II (Hulu)
• Dear Edward (Apple TV+)
• RuPaul's Drag Race Season 15 (MTV)
• The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (Netflix)

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This week, Kris and Tara are thrilled to welcome two very special guests to the podcast. All the way from We're Here Season 2, we have Shangela's drag daughter Amy Rambow and Amy's son Alex.

If you've listened to the podcast before, you know we have a special place in our hearts for We're Here. In this time of increased radicalization and targeting of queer people, We're Here is one of the most important shows on TV, documenting these shifts, while keeping its message of love front and center.

From Amy:

• Project Contrast
• Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper

From Alex:

• Bloom by Kevin Panetta
• Heartstopper, book series by Alice Oseman

Follow Amy:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter

Follow Alex on Tiktok

Follow Watertown Love

• Instagram
• Facebook

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Kris and Tara are back from break with an extra long episode. We've got listener questions this week and it's all about reintroductions. Who are we? What are we like? What are we doing on this podcast? Questions are answered!

Kris's new book, Catch, is also out! She discusses reviews and her thoughts on first and third person perspective bias. And, Kris and Tara check in on how their dogs are doing. Kris found something that wasn't a walnut. Tara felt deep inter-species empathy for her puppy. Also, Tara queerly recommends taking time off work.

Welcome to the new year, folks. We're going places.

From Kris: The Inspection (2022)

This week, Kris recommends The Inspection, a film written and directed by Elegance Bratton. It's based on his own real-life experiences as a young man facing homophobia at home and in a Marines boot camp as he struggles to make something of his life.

From Tara: Rational Creatures

Tara's big recommendation this week is Rational Creatures, a web series that retells Jane Austen's Persuasion in the modern day. Tara loves herself some queering of Austen (remember her love of last year, Fire Island?) and this series is one she couldn't put down.

• The Fixer (The Villains Series #1) by Lee Winter
• The Red Files (On the Record Book 1) by Lee Winter
• Close to Home by Rachel Spangler
• Married At First Sight, Season 10 (Lifetime)
• The Sopranos (HBO)
• Bird Box (Netflix)
• Pentiment (Xbox, Microsoft))
• Tara's Drag Race Minute
• Validate (Steam, itchio, Nintendo, Xbox)
• The Hot Ones
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo)
• Lizzie Bennet Diaries

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No new episode this week because the holidays borked our recording timing.

But! We don't want to leave you totally hanging, so here are our top 5 most downloaded episodes of 2022. If you haven't listened to any of them yet, you should check them out!

1. Mistaking Access for Permission: in this regular episode, we have a segment with sapphic romance superstar author Jae and Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches Trashy Books co-founder, talking about the all-too prevalent problem of readers sexually harassing authors
2. Milena McKay (and Tara) loves Truth and Measure: what happens when an author and a critic get together to talk about one of their most beloved fanfics turned published novels? SO MUCH SQUEEING.
3. It's Radclyffe!: this year, we celebrated Pride by talking to lesfic powerhouse Radclyffe about writing and publishing lesbian fiction, why lesbian fiction has always been political, and more
4. Melissa Brayden Has Not Been Frugal With Her Jewels: we rang in Valentine's Day with one of the queens of sapphic romance, comparing our fave fictional couples, kisses, and romances that we love to reread
5. Remember Who the Fuck You Are, with Catie Randazzo & J Chong: we fell in love with the reality cooking competition show The Big Brunch and were delighted to catch up with two of our favourite chefs from the show. Catie and J talk about what it's like representing their communities and answer the all-important question of what kind of bread they think the show's judges are

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