Tag Archives: queer representation

Boots, halfway through: A Marine-shaped box

Posted on by Henry
The less morbid option for a Marine-shaped box

I’ve watched more of Boots, finishing episode four and just barely starting episode five. The show’s message feels clearer now. My initial curiosity is congealing into grim resignation.

Boots isn’t bad. It’s well crafted. The character portrayals and overt construction of masculinity that piqued my curiosity still remain. I can still enjoy picking through and examining them. I can enjoy stripping them for parts.

The show isn’t bad/wrong, the storytelling isn’t bad/wrong, but I like Boots less now.

Why?

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Boots (Netflix 2025)

Posted on by Henry

I’ve seen the first episode of Boots, and I have mixed feelings. 

I’m not sure how to engage with the show. It’s the sometimes funny, sometimes awful story of a young gay man named Cameron Cope who joins the Marines (in 1990, when homosexuality in the armed forces was still criminalized) without really knowing what he was getting himself into. Boots is based on the book The Pink Marine by Greg Cope White (no relation to the best of my knowledge), which is apparently a memoir of White’s own time in the Marines.

I’m unsure about Boots because I’m not sure what Boots is trying to say, or what conclusion it’s reaching towards. Does it have a negative message about being in boot camp as a young gay man in 1990? Does it have a positive message about that?

Is it both?

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Time Cut (Netflix 2024)

Posted on by Henry

Time travel and slasher movies seem like a rare combination, but there might be something in the air. Last week I watched Totally Killer and really enjoyed it. I think the universe heard my enthused raving, because Time Cut just came out.

I have, in the course of a few short days, seen the number of time travel slasher movies I’m aware of double. Maybe this is the new Moore’s Law and next week I’ll learn about two more? Anyway, I liked Totally Killer a lot, so I had to give Time Cut a try.

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Nimona (Netflix 2023)

Posted on by Henry

I loved the comic by ND Stevenson. 

I loved this movie too, right up to the end, even though it was clearly its own take on the story. 90% of this movie, maybe 98% of this movie, did more or less everything I wanted. The actors, animators, and writers did a marvelous job. Then, at the very end, the movie really frustrated me.

I can’t meaningfully talk about this movie, and how I feel about it, without spoiling the end. Suffice to say I didn’t expect this totally predictable ending. I wish they had written a different one. I’ll mark the spoilers below.

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Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee

Posted on by Henry

NinefoxGambit

Layers. Layers on layers on layers, ploys on top of ploys, backstabbing all the way down. And somewhere, sandwiched between all those knives, a few people trying to make a tyrannical empire a better place despite itself.

Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire series (of which I’ve read the first two books) feels like a reimagining of the fundamental critiques of Warhammer 40k—but instead of trapping his work beneath cynical satire and Poe’s Law, Yoon Ha Lee renders his critiques of empire transparently and with heart.

Ninefox Gambit is a new presentation of classic sci-fi military fiction, discarding the traditional fetish for the tools of war and replacing it with an exploration of the human cost of imposing and maintaining empire… and of resisting and rectifying it. It does this all with a setting in which the violent and malignant imposition of hegemony is part and parcel of the exotic technological base necessary for interstellar civilization, and in which heretical practice literally erodes the power and capabilities of the empire’s technologies; mathematical and spatial relations, punctuated by suffering and pain, form the bedrock of calendrical technology, and the embrace of this calendrical tech-base has trapped the Hexarchate in a never-ending cycle of violence and subjugation.

With the Hexarchate’s rulers a group of professionally inhumane paranoiacs, determined to retain their power and uphold the stability of their realm with no care for the cost in lives, it takes a very special kind of heretic to oppose them.

If you like science fiction, or military fiction, or anti-imperial explorations in uncomfortably familiar alien settings, this book is for you. If you want your books to explain everything to you and never leave you piecing together elements of a setting or story… I might suggest something else.

Also, if you’ve traditionally avoided sci-fi mil-fic because it’s one long paean to unquestioning support of cis-het male hegemony, don’t worry. This series radically normalizes queered gender and sexuality. I really appreciated that.

In case you couldn’t guess, I think this book (and series) is great. I don’t want to say more, because I want you to experience it for yourself. I strongly recommend Ninefox Gambit.

If you like this book, I’d also recommend Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey

Posted on by Henry

RiverOfTeeth

Dang, that cover is gorgeous.

I just realized that I never wrote anything about River of Teeth here.

River of Teeth is a delight. It is compelling, it is exceedingly evocative, and it cemented my tremendous respect for Sarah Gailey. That respect isn’t simply for Gailey’s fabulous what-if—though a heist western about queer hippo-riding cowboys in the swamps of Louisiana wins you lots of points in my book—no, my respect is for Gailey’s obdurate embrace of optimism, hope, and upbeat tone despite nearly every genre expectation insisting otherwise. When I read River of Teeth, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d read a book so fraught with dire struggle, and with emotional conflict, yet which somehow rose above despondency and grimdark. It’s still hard to come up with such titles, but this is one of them.

Gailey’s characters are capable, but merely mortal. They face the impossible. And somehow they never lose heart.

I think it says something that I inhaled River of Teeth, and then immediately inhaled the sequel, and only ever felt better for having done so.

River of Teeth is a small thing, and it’s a marvel that there is so much inside it. I strongly recommend both it and its sequel Taste of Marrow. If you like well-grounded weird historical what-ifs, or westerns, or heists, or stories which adamantly refuse to kill their queers and which hold tight to hope with both hands… this story is for you. If you just want a good time, this story is for you.

Please, go read the book.