Friday Fics Fix - Lost and Found

(Warning: this post discusses Homophobia/general Queerphobia, and negative stereotypes of LGBTQ+ people.)

'Watching David watching him and not really knowing if he was only picturing David there, or if David actually was there.'

 ***All Amazon.com links in this post are commission links. This means I earn commission from purchases made in the US*** 

Please do not use my links to make UK purchases.

If you've faffed around the nerd part of the Internet, or the bookish part of the Internet, or the Queer part of the Internet, (amongst others, I'm sure,) you'll know that it's spooky season, i.e. October leading up to Halloween 👻

A lot of Queer people love horror and/or all things Gothic. I mean LOVE it.

Even if, as a genre, it's always had a somewhat love/hate relationship with us, painting us as either villain or deserving victim in more shameful stereotypes than I have the energy to go into here. 

And even that was often a coding (i.e. implied,) rather than explicitly Queer characters.

...Which has inevitably left us, a lot of the time, with the subtext.

Queer people and the subtext are extremely well-acquainted by this point. 

We'll even take some of those problematic tropes and literally cheer for the villain (depending on which villain, we have standards.)

Via Chris Gannon @ Giphy

The thing is, even though we have some celebrated explicit Queerness in horror (Jennifer's Body, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Book of Monsters,) much of it is still problematic - even my beloved spooky fave Jennifer's Body places us on the villain-victim axis.

(Side note: A lot of YouTubers have rediscovered Jennifer's Body as of late, and I'm loving it!)

But still, many Queer people will return to horror - again and again.

Going into why that is would probably require a degree in psychology, maybe one in sociology, and possibly some other degrees too, but the long and the short of it is this: we see ourselves in horror.

We can't help but sympathise with many of these villains and victims - because they're the roles that many of us have been cast in by society as a whole, largely without our permission.

All of which is an extensive and slightly rambling sociological intro to the subject of today's fanfiction: The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys is an amazing vampire film from 1987.

It's also very, very, Gay.

Via Giphy

...But not explicitly.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, would argue that it's straight. Some people will argue anything is straight.

But it's not. It's All the Gay™. 

The director, Joel Schumacher, who died earlier this year, was Gay, and knew what he was doing, tbh.

It's just that it was 1987. Explicitly Gay wasn't on the cards in 1987 - not if you actually wanted the film to be released.

So, it's our old friend sub-text again!

Cue fanfiction!

Now, I should be clear here, dearest nerdlets: neither The Lost Boys nor this piece of fanfiction are entirely free of problematicness.

But where The Lost Boys has the Queer advantage over other horror stuff is that only a handful of characters aren't Queer-coded. (...And arguments could be made about some of them.)

Which gives everything room for more complexity than the film at first suggests.

Which brings us, finally, to this week's well-written fic, a beautiful and complex piece of fanfiction with explicit M/M representation.

I love it. I really love it!

It inhabits an in-between-y place where the events are open to interpretation without leaving you feeling cheated for the sake of ambiguity.

It also has a that morally dubious edge which you'd expect from any media where the Vampire lore is old-school (as in, more Dracula than Twilight.)

And it captured the vibe of The Lost Boys so beautifully!

It keeps that delicious taste of the dialogue that the film has, and carries it through the entire fic.

(...I don't mean that metaphorically. Synaesthesia ftw!)

This being horror, we're gonna need some content warnings dearest nerdlets:

- blood (lotsa blood!)

- gore

- violence

- murder

- grief

- symptoms of potential mental health problems

It also has SPOILERS and EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT - ok? 

Ok. You have been warned dearest nerdlets!

This week's fic, then, is:

Drop by immortalitylost

Are you a fan of The Lost Boys?

What's your fave Queer horror (explicit or subtext)?

Talk to me! 💖💬

You can follow me on Twitter @CeeDoraReads, on Pinterest, and on Dora Reads @ BlogLovin. For more ways to support me, check out the Support Me page

Related Reading:

• Friday Fics Fix - In 2009, There Was A Girl Named Jennifer Check

• Friday Fics Fix - Undead, Not Unreasonable

• Friday Fics Fix - Pride Fics Fest: Bringing Subtext Into The Spotlight

• Nerd Church - The Slow Process of Learning To Stop Straight-Passing

Sharing and commenting is awesomely awesome! 😁

← Previous Post