Heartstopper: Volume 1

Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman

Heartstopper is a cute British gay teen romance story. One "rugby lad" sees a known gay boy run fast and asks him to join the rugby team. They become friends. The become even closer after The rugby guy protects the gay guy from an "in the closet" former boyfriend who did not understand no.  The rugby connects with the girl he previously kissed at a party and learns that she is gay. He later kisses the known gay guy. The tale of developing relationship is fairly universal.

Blackouts: A Novel

Blackouts: A Novel by Justin Torres

This is fictional book based somewhat on the life of the author. He is somewhat vague on how truthful it is. That is the great part of being fiction. It centers on conversations between two gay men and explores some of the ways homsexuality was previously viewed. It posits that it was often "studied" in a voyeuristic way as it was marginalized as insanely devient. The book itself almost build up the stereotype with graphic descriptions. It tries to be erudite while being sophomoric. 

From the World of Percy Jackson: Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure

A good audiobook narration can help bring you into the book. A bad narration can put you to sleep. Alas, The Sun and the Star fit into the latter. It also didn't help that the story was always breaking for the boys to express their love for each other. Did they forget that they were in the middle of a life and death battle? They do go down to the underworld and try to do something. Some monsters and a cat are with them. They are also in love. Maybe it should be billed as a romance rather than a fantasy adventure?

Less Is Lost

Arthur Less is a cash strapped gay writer. He has discovered that back rent is owed to the estate for the place that he and others have been living. He goes on a cross country trip to interview a more well known writer and later a book tour of his own. Alas, he is often confused with another black religious writer with the same name. In the end they finally meet after a series of bizarre misadventures on the way. There is some interesting looks into relationships and writers with a light and bizarre feel,

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

The Viral Underclass purports to explore how inequality leads to negative societal outcomes when diseases hit. In actuality, it takes advantage of interest in racism and COVID-19 to talk about AIDS. The arguments both overreach and contradict themselves. On one side, there is sympathy for essential workers, sex workers, trans and people of color because they cannot work from home during an epidemic. On the other hand, anti-maskers that cannot work from home are criticized. They are lumped together with wealthy white anti-vaxers. He bemoans poor states for the high rate of COVID deaths. Is because the poor don't have access to prophylactics? Or is it that they don't want to?

The bulk of the book discusses gay culture and AIDS. The author covered a case where a gay black man was convicted for spreading AIDS to others. He legitimately criticizes the stigma and approach to testing. If somebody never tests, then they cannot be convicted. Testing is beneficial to society, yet a positive test can lead to somebody being subjected to penalties.

Beyond AIDS, the author reaches for strings for just about anything to make his argument. Racism, Speciesism, Ableism. Any group that "others" discriminate against is part of the viral underclass. It is not their fault they get sick, they are just victims of society. The argument is weakened by cherry-picking facts based on a certain worldview.

Capitalism is attacked for producing this underclass. It is also criticized for charging money for vaccines and other prophylactics. (Missed is the fact that capitalism was able to quickly produce COVID-19 vaccines. A few companies succeeded and made a lot of money. Many other companies tried, yet failed to produce working vaccines.)  Anarchy is viewed as the solution that would resolve this. Everybody would just work together nicely without big government and business in the way. In the ideal world, maybe. But with billions of people? Small scale communes have broken down. Could earth survive? 

This could have been a good book about the stigma of AIDS and the need to balance punishment of bad behavior with public health. Instead it tried to cast a wider net and failed miserably.

Ship It

Ship It starts out as R-rated gay fan fiction, then switches into a teenage coming of age book. It feels like something that was written from personal experience. It centers around a girl who is obsessed with a cult television series. She writes fan fiction where the two leads end up hooking up. The book also follows one of the lead actors in the series. This show was his first big break, and he is hoping to get on another video game adaption. There is tension with the characters discovering their sexuality and the relationship between artists and their fans.
One message the book asks is for media to have more characters that "look like me". Alas, this is a double edged sword. If the entire US population is targeted, then the characters should all be white to appeal to the majority. If the world is targeted, perhaps one white and one Chinese. Only with large ensembles would other racial groups start to appear. However, even these get tricky. How would somebody identify themselves to "see themselves" in the show? If the identify as human, then great, anybody can represent them. If they identify as 5% Cherokee, 20% Kenyan, 40% Portuguese and 35% Northern European, then it will be much harder to achieve the exact representation. And that only touches external race. What about religion or home country? Sexuality also opens up a whole new can of worms. The focus on this book is "queer" vs. "straight". But what about attraction to other physical characteristics? As audiences attempt to divide themselves into greater numbers of subgroups, it becomes more and more impossible to find the perfect subgroup that matches them.
That also brings up the "demonizing" of other subgroups. In the book, the "queer" subgroup is attempting to show their mark on the show. However, to do that, the group of masculine gamers is demonized. They are portrayed as homophobic thugs who don't want to have anything to do with the actor after he shows a sympathy to queer passion. Once a formerly oppressed subgroup gets their is a natural tendency to take it out on the others. Our societal harmony depends on not doing that and respecting the views of others even if they don't agree with ours. The does a good job in showing the fluidity of "queerness". A straight character can engage in a same-sex kiss, while one can be queer and engage in a positive heterosexual relationship. However, the focus is on giving in to passions. This sets up conflict with the "me too" movement and a legal code. There still needs to be restraint in place, even if chemistry appears to be present.